DOXA and Music on Main’s Modulus Festival are very happy to co-present a unique convergence of performance and cinema with Heddy Honigmann’s award-winning film Around the World in 50 Concerts and soloist Caroline Shaw, Music on Main’s Composer in Residence. Shaw, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for her composition Partita for 8 Voices, and is recently featured on Kanye West’s new album (Swish) will perform a selection inspired by Honigmann’s film as well as participate in a post-film discussion.
Around the World in 50 Concerts follows the 125th Anniversary tour of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam. As musicians traverse the globe, stunning performances in Argentina, South Africa and Russia, are set against the more mundane reality of touring. Instruments and musicians alike are bundled on planes and shuttled on to the next gig. Each moment of musical glory is met and matched by a scene of flautists and percussionists asleep on a bus. Throughout Honigmann’s genial presence provides a constant accompaniment, as she talks with startling intimacy to a broad range of people about music. Whether it’s school kids in South Africa, musicians getting slowly drunk in a bar, or a massive crowd of joyous soccer fans, music has the ability to erase borders, to unite people in passion, and to carry memory. Nowhere is this more evident than in the scene devoted to an elderly man recounting his earliest memories of his parents, listening to recordings of Mahler before the war. Honigmann captures music’s transformational, devotional aspects with honesty, humour and a considerable amount of joy.
“A magnificent tapestry of sounds and images, this documentary interweaves multiple leitmotifs that flow through the film like familiar old friends, surging to the forefront only to be reabsorbed and casually encountered farther on. Honigmann focuses on individual orchestra and audience members without fanfare, allowing them virtuoso riffs but never losing sight of the ensemble.” – Variety
“These people’s stories unfold in surprising ways, as does Ms. Honigmann’s documentary, which mostly avoids the formulaic. If the movie gets a bit gooey at times that’s probably an occupational hazard when considering the sublime. And Ms. Honigmann’s restraint – there’s something classical in her style, too – keeps the film from floating away. When it threatens to, something piercing or traumatic brings it back to earth, where any account of art belongs.” – The New York Times
Tickets: $15 adults | $12 students & seniors
Film includes English subtitles | Rated PG (Sexual Language)
For more information about this event please visit our website at www.doxafestival.ca
