No Turning Back: Scoring Silent Running(2020)

John Cage: I Have Nothing to Say and I Am Saying It(en)

This 56-minute documentary on America's most controversial and unique composer manages to cover a great many aspects of Cage's work and thought. His love for mushrooms, his Zen beliefs and use of the I Ching, and basic bio details are all explained intelligently and dynamically. Black Mountain, Buckminster Fuller, Rauschenberg, Duchamp are mentioned. Yoko Ono, John Rockwell, Laurie Anderson, Richard Kostelanetz make appearances. Fascinating performance sequences include Margaret Leng-Tan performing on prepared piano, Merce Cunningham and company, and performances of Credo In Us, Water Music, and Third Construction. Demystifies the man who made music from silence, from all sounds, from life.

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda(ja)

Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto weaves man-made and natural sounds together in his works. His anti-nuclear activism grew after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and his career only paused after a 2014 cancer diagnosis.

Leoš Janáček(cs)

SIMON! The Joy of Conducting(de)

“As I child, I always had music in my head. I thought everybody did,” the legendary conductor Sir Simon Rattle recalls. His charming and humorous reflections on the unifying magic of conducting are complemented by interviews with well-known contemporaries and accompanied by thrilling concert footage. His music is a joy to all those who listen to it!

Music by John Williams(en)

His unforgettable scores are an essential part of some of the most beloved movies of our time, over a career that spans decades. See and hear maestro John Williams' own story, with insights from filmmakers, musicians, and others he has inspired, complete with rare behind-the-scenes looks at the making of movie history.

Frank Zappa: New York and Elsewhere(en)

Frank Zappa: New York & Elsewhere is an Austrian released TV documentary directed in 1980 by Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher, aka DoRo productions, who are most popular for their work with Queen.

Quincy(en)

An intimate look into the life of icon Quincy Jones. A unique force in music and popular culture for 70 years, Jones has transcended racial and cultural boundaries; his story is inextricably woven into the fabric of America. Jones came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor before working on pop music and film scores. He moved easily between musical genres, producing major pop hits of the early 1960s and serving as an arranger and conductor for several collaborations in the same time period.

John Wyre: Drawing on Sound(en)

Documentary about Canadian composer John Wyre.

Memories of a Young Pianist(en)

Interview with the italian composer Claudio Gizzi about his lifetime and work as part or the extras of the Blu-Ray edition from What? (Che?) (1972) from Roman Polanski

Bela Bartók(en)

A portrait of the life and work of the great Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, exploring both his music and his passionate interest in his country's folklore.

Hrana – 4 filmy o Marekovi Brezovskom(sk)

The film is a testimony to the short but extremely dynamic life of one of the most talented Slovak composers of the new era – Marek Brezovský. He died of a heroin overdose at the age of 20. The film is also a report on an entire generation that came of age in the chaotic post-revolutionary period of the first half of the 1990s. A generation for whom Marek Brezovský's music became their essential cry and sounds like a hymn in their hearts. The film about Marek Brezovský is an attempt to reconstruct one human life. A life that was dramatically short, but incredibly intense and fruitful. Marek Brezovský is perhaps the first Slovak artist to become famous after his death.

Classic Albums: Frank Zappa - Apostrophe (') Over-Nite Sensation(en)

This episode focuses on Zappa's early 70s albums, Overnight Sensation (1973) and Apostrophy (') (1974). Together they encapsulate Zappa's extraordinary musical diversity and were also the 2 most commercially successful albums that he released in his prolific career. Included are interviews, musical demonstrations, rare archive & home movie footage, plus live performances to tell the story behind the conception and recording of these groundbreaking albums. Extras include additional interviews and demonstrations not included in the broadcast version, 2 full performances from the Roxy in 1973 and Saturday Night Live in 1976, and new full live performance done specially for these Classic Albums.

Listen(en)

"A soundscape is any collection of sounds, almost like a painting is a collection of visual attractions," says composer R. Murray Schafer. "When you listen carefully to the soundscape it becomes quite miraculous." David New's portrait of the renowned composer becomes a lesson unto itself, gracing viewers (and listeners) with a singular moment of interactive subjectivity. This film was produced for the 2009 Governor General's Performing Arts Award.

Royalty Free: The Music of Kevin MacLeod(en)

A documentary on how composer Kevin MacLeod unwittingly became one of the most heard composers in the world by releasing thousands of songs for free.

Quincy Jones | Music Man(fr)

The Sweatbox(en)

Trudie Styler, a documentarian, had been allowed to film the production of 'Kingdom of the Sun'/'The Emperor's New Groove' as part of the deal that originally brought her husband Sting to the project. As a result, Styler recorded much of the struggle, controversy, and troubles that went into making the picture on film (including when producer Fullmer called Sting to inform the pop star that his songs were being deleted from the film). Styler's completed documentary, The Sweatbox, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 13, 2002. Disney owns the rights to the documentary and has not released it on home video or DVD.

The Kindness of Strangers(en)

The life of composer, conductor, pianist and Oscar-winner Andre Previn, filmed during a year which culminated in the world premiere of his first opera, A Streetcar Named Desire, in San Francisco. Wherever he went, the camera followed. To Tokyo for a concert with Kiri Te Kanawa. To Philadelphia for a teaching session in the Curtis Institute. To Tanglewood for an incredible jazz improvisation recording of Gershwin Variations. To New York to play with the Ray Brown Trio at the Blue Note Club. To Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic. To Washington DC for a concert with the Emerson Quartet. To Boston for a conductor's masterclass with, among others, Daniel Harding. And, of course, the rehearsals and first performance of Streetcar with the incomparable Renee Fleming and director Colin Graham.

Akira Ifukube Biography(en)

A biography and tribute to one of Japan's most prolific composers.

Helicopter String Quartet(de)

One morning, the late Karlheinz Stockhausen awoke from a dream that told him to take to the sky. Stockhausen envisioned four helicopters swirling in the clouds, with each of a quartet’s members tucked inside his own chopper, communicating through headsets, stringing away in sync to the rotor-blade motors. He immediately set forth to make that dream a reality. In 1995, Dutch film director Scheffer followed Stockhausen in the days leading up to the premiere performance of his Helicopter String Quartet in Amsterdam. The resulting film offers a rare glimpse of Stockhausen as he patiently dictates every agonizingly detailed measure to the Arditti Quartet.

Once Upon a Time Michel Legrand(fr)

Michel Legrand, jazz musician and composer extraordinaire, has left his mark on the history of cinema, including the films of Jacques Demy, especially The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the 60th anniversary of which is being celebrated in Cannes. Using never-before-seen archives and personal accounts, the film looks back on a lifetime dedicated to music, and the career of a man who served it masterfully to the very end.