Best Documentary, DC Independent Film Festival
Best Documentary, Int'l Subject, Eugene Film Festival
Audience Choice Award, Friday Harbor Film Festival
Best Documentary, Asheville Cinema Festival
"a heartening rarity", -Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal
film: http://thegreatsong.net/portfolio_page/shining-night/
Song Without Borders Presents A Film by Michael Stillwater
Co-Produced by Doris Laesser Stillwater
'Shining Night: A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen' celebrates the life and music of the artist whom musicologist Nick Strimple has called 'the only American composer in history who can be called a mystic'.
America's most frequently performed choral composer, Lauridsen is a National Medal of Arts recipient who spends summers on a remote island in the Pacific Northwest.
Exploring the relationship of art, nature, and spirituality, 'Shining Night' reveals the composer through the lens of his love for the natural world together with his passion for music and literature, woven with commentaries from composers, conductors, singers, and friends.
Filmed between 2010-2011 in California, Scotland, Germany and Waldron Island, Washington, the documentary conveys the richness and breadth of the award-winning composer's life, with a soundtrack featuring his masterworks- Lux Aeterna, O Magnum Mysterium, Nocturnes (Sa Nuit D'Ete, Soneto de la Noche, and Sure On This Shining Night), Dirait-On and Madrigali.
Commentaries by Dana Gioia (poet and chairman of National Endowment for the Arts, 2003-2009), Paul Salamunovich (director emeritus of the Los Angeles Master Chorale), Robert Geary (artistic director of Volti and the San Francisco Choral Society) and Paul Mealor (composer and conductor of Con Anima and the University of Aberdeen Choral Society and Orchestra), Alex Shapiro and others. Performances by San Francisco Choral Society, Volti, Aberdeen Choral Society and Orchestra, and Con Anima Chamber Singers are included.
Music used courtesy of Peermusic, publisher and copyright holder under the imprints Southern Music Publishing Co., Inc., and Songs of Peer, Ltd. Special thanks to Todd Vunderink of Peermusic Classical New York for permission to use Morten Lauridsen's music in this film.
Special thanks to all speakers, singers, musicians, conductors, publishers, record companies and friends for their contributions in the making of this film, and to Ursula Lamberson, Wendy Grace, Camille Adair and Green Hospice for their sponsorship, without whom this film could not have happened.
film: http://thegreatsong.net/portfolio_page/shining-night/
To order DVD, visit:
https://innerharmony.com/show_product.php?pid=1282
For film soundtrack, visit:
http://thegreatsong.net/shining-night-collection/
