CODA

She can’t do it any more: join the barricades, go into politics, or invest in renewable energy. Magda is 100 years old and is spending her final hours. She still has a bottle to finish, is surrounded by the most beautiful music of her old friend Ryuichi Sakamoto, and still has something to say. For if stories exist to pass on life’s lessons, what story is needed now? With her great-grandson in mind and the beauty Sakamoto left behind all around her, Magda searches, together with the audience, for something that will outlive her.

Cello Octet Amsterdam and Sophie van Winden create a musical death scene centred on the question: what do we leave behind? Featuring music by Ryuichi Sakamoto, arranged for cello especially for the performance, and new text by Sophie van Winden.
For Ryuichi Sakamoto, his music was linked to the struggle for a better world. Among other things, he was the initiator of a major reforestation project and an anti-nuclear activist. In 2022, he fell terminally ill. Facing his own death, he sat at the piano and reflected on the legacy he would leave behind. Those meditations during his chemotherapy led to the album ‘12’, which we can hear as his own musical death scene. He also recorded the very last concert he gave before his death: the album ‘Opus’. The composer passed away in 2023. The performance features music from ‘Opus’, as well as pieces such as ‘Thousand Knives’ and ‘Reversing’.