This film is a journey with the famous pianist Yuja Wang. With more than 120 performances a year, she lives a nomadic lifestyle. The exploration of Yuja’s wanderings is a travelogue of exciting venues, glitzy cities and encounters with extraordinary artists, such as Gustavo Dudamel, Gauthier Capuçon and Leonidas Kavakos and personalities of other professional horizons but there is also a downside: fatigue, jet lag, pressure, doubts, hostilities, disorientation, and loneliness. With a bittersweet reference to the transience of life, the film reveals the invisible that complements the visible and shows us this artist in a very personal way. “Pianists have to be alone all the time, and it’s hard, it’s lonely. Being a musician is almost like a very isolated life, and the only time you actually get to communicate is on stage with music. It’s not a bad thing. I think being solitary, it really allows us to think about life and to think about why people write this music. […] It makes you start to wonder about things that are beneath the surface.” Yuja Wang
Short Rides with John Adams
John Adams is one of the most influential and at the same time most popular US composers of the post-war period, known for his irresistible music in which minimalism is mixed with imaginative orchestration and jazzy verve. The Film accompanied the composer for a year on his explorations and “Short Rides” in Berlin. The film documents both on and off stage encounters with musicians of the Berliner Philharmoniker, old friends and associates such as Sir Simon Rattle, Peter Sellars, Gustavo Dudamel and star violinist Leila
Josefowicz (“I call him Johnny”). A film which is both entertaining and serious, and which features jazz-inspired symphonic and poignant Passion music. A film not only for connaisseurs and admirers – just like the music of John Adams.
Bienvenido Gustavo!
“Red Carpet Special” of Gustavo Dudamel’s Inaugural Concert as musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.