Maurizio! The Life and Times of Maurice Ravel

Join us for the exciting premiere of Susan Waterfall’s new film Maurizio! The Life and Times of Maurice Ravel. Immerse yourself in the composer’s world, and enhance your experience of the many Ravel offerings in this summer’s Festival: the Festival Orchestra’s Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2; the Calder’s performance of his String Quartet in F Major, the only one he wrote; Jeffrey LaDeur and Kindra Scharich’s performance of his song cycles, Histoires Naturelles and Deux épigrammes de Clément Marot and his Valses nobles et sentimentales for piano; and the two narrated chamber music concerts The Lure of the Exotic and The Attraction of Modernism.

You’ve heard music by Ravel and probably loved it. You’ve heard random gossip about this secretive composer. Now’s your chance to experience Ravel’s life and music in its historic context. With contemporary art and photographs, and 26 musical excerpts, you’ll get an overview of a composer whose creative life spanned the voluptuous conclusion of the Belle Epoque, the trauma of the First World War, and the new paths to modernism that emerged in the 20’s and 30’s. 85 years after his death, nosy biographers are still trying to understand Ravel’s mysterious private life, as inscrutable as his music is irresistible.

A Q&A will follow the screening. Thanks to Deborah Whigham and Gary Ratway for sponsoring this screening.

Written and directed by Susan Waterfall.
Art and photograph collection by Mina Cohen.
Filmed and edited by Julian Pollack.

2023 Featured Composer: Maurice Ravel

For 2023, Susan Waterfall’s composer series will feature the innovative and influential Maurice Ravel. Immerse yourself in his world and his music, and understand how his music evolved over his lifetime with narrated chamber recitals featuring exciting guest artists, and various other settings of Ravel’s work across the Festival.

Explore the Series

Waterfall’s productions always present exciting, absorbing playing of great music, but are also rare, distinctive examples of what can be called music education, though they’re more conversational, truly a sharing of perspective, interest, anecdote. There’s a sense of immediacy to her delivery, weaving in and out of the playing, an intimately conceived present awareness of this heritage. It’s something unique that needs to be experienced.” -Ken Bullock, Berkeley Daily Planet