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Frank Scheffer | |
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| Born | 19 March 1956 |
| Nationality | Dutch |
| Alma mater | Dutch Film Academy, Amsterdam |
| Occupation(s) | Film director, film producer. |
| Children | Roxanne Huber Allegri Scheffer, Muyi Scheffer |
Frank Scheffer (born 1956 in Venlo) is a Dutch director, cinematographer and producer of documentary film, mostly known for his work Conducting Mahler (1996) on the 1995 Mahler Festival in Amsterdam with Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Riccardo Muti and Simon Rattle. [1]
Scheffer was schooled at the Academy for Industrial Design (Eindhoven), the "Vrije Academie" Art College in The Hague, where he studied with the famous experimental filmmaker Frans Zwartjes and is a graduate from the Dutch Film Academy in Amsterdam.
Early films include Zoetrope People (1982), a documentary on Francis Ford Coppola and his studio with Wim Wenders, Tom Waits, Vittorio Storaro and others, as well as documentaries on the Dalai Lama and various socio/cultural subjects. In 1985 he directed the music video A Day for the band XYMOX on the 4AD Records label, leading him towards musical subjects. 1987 saw his short experimental films Wagner‘s Ring, a distillation of The Ring in 3'50" conceived with John Cage; and Stoperas 1/2 which was created to be shown with Cage's Europeras 1 & 2. Collaborations with Cage continued with the conceptual film Chessfilmnoise (1988), a documentary on Cage and Elliott Carter Time Is Music (1988), and From Zero (1995) in collaboration with Andrew Culver.
Scheffer’s films on music constitute an overview of the great composers of the 20th century — from Conducting Mahler (1996) on the 1995 Mahler Festival in Amsterdam with Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Riccardo Muti and Simon Rattle to Five Orchestral Pieces (1994) on Arnold Schönberg's work conducted by Michael Gielen and The Final Chorale (1990) on Igor Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw.
Further documentaries include films on Louis Andriessen (The Road, 1997, conducted by Péter Eötvös), Luciano Berio (Voyage to Cythera from 1999 on his Sinfonia conducted by the composer), Pierre Boulez (Eclat, 1993), and ( Helikopter String Quartet , 1996) with Karlheinz Stockhausen and the Arditti Quartet.
The history of Electronic Music, from Stockhausen to DJ Spooky and Squarepusher, was the subject of Sonic Acts film in (1998). This was followed by three experimental projects searching for the influence of the digital medium in film and music: Sonic Images (1998), Sonic Fragments / The Poetics of Digital Fragmentation (1999) and Sonic Genetics (2000).
In 1999 Scheffer made Music for Airports, a video on Brian Eno's music of the same name as arranged by Bang on a Can founders Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, David Lang and Evan Ziporyn. The sprawling In the Ocean (2001), on present day New York composers, features Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Elliott Carter, John Cage, Brian Eno and the Bang on a Can founders.
Scheffer is also working on several in depth films on specific composers — The Present Day Composer Refuses to Die on Frank Zappa, in cooperation with the Zappa Family Trust (2000, featuring The Mothers of Invention, Pierre Boulez and Ensemble Modern), and the 90-minute Zappa feature Phaze II, The Big Note (2002), to be followed by a third film which will complete his Zappa trilogy. Scheffer has been following and filming Elliott Carter for 25 years; this culminated in A Labyrinth of Time (2005), a portrait on the composer as well as a view of the history of modernism in the 20th century. In 2005 Scheffer also finished a feature-length documentary on the Tea-Opera composed by Tan Dun, with Pierre Audi (Director) and Xiu Ying(libretto), Tea. This film had its world premiere in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2006 a retrospective of his work and a Docu-Concert was exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
A documentary on the Tehran Philharmonic Orchestra and its chief conductor, the Iranian composer Nader Mashayekhi with the title To Be And Not To Be was premiered at the doku-arts festival June 2009. A feature-length documentary on composer Edgard Varèse with the title The One All Alone was selected for the 2009 Venice Film Festival. In 2010 he finished Eastern Voices featuring a.o. Syrian musician Ibrahim Keivo and one of the finest voices in the world today the Aserbajanian singer Alim Qasimov. It won the German Record Critics' Award 2011 (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik) for the DVD in Germany. A feature-length documentary on the Iranian composer Nader Mashayekhi, Gozaran / Time Passing. In 2011 Gozaran / Time Passing was selected for the international competition of the IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam). To celebrate the 100th birthday of John Cage in 2012, he made an experimental film called Ryoanji and re-edited the film material shot in 1987 with the title: How To Get Out Of The Cage (A year with John Cage). It won again the German Record Critics' Award 2012 (Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik). He is currently shooting a documentary on the Chinese composer Guo Wenjing and the Sichuan opera. In the future dramatic features based on Die Zauberflöte composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the parallel lives of Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg, are planned.
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American musician, composer, and bandleader. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he also produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. His work is characterized by nonconformity, improvisation sound experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation.
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The Helikopter-Streichquartett is one of Karlheinz Stockhausen's best-known pieces, and one of the most complex to perform. It involves a string quartet, four helicopters with pilots, as well as audio and video equipment and technicians. It was first performed and recorded in 1995. Although performable as a self-sufficient piece, it also forms the third scene of the opera Mittwoch aus Licht.
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William Goodchild is a composer, orchestrator and conductor who produces music for film, television and the concert hall.
Lucerne Festival is one of the leading international festivals in the world of classical music and presents a series of classical music festivals based in Lucerne, Switzerland. Founded in 1938 by Ernest Ansermet and Walter Schulthess, it currently produces three festivals per year. Since 1999, Michael Haefliger has been its Executive and Artistic Director.
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Luciano Chailly was an Italian composer and arts administrator of French descent. He was an eclectic and prolific composer in the post-war Italy, combining tonal, polytonal, and twelve-tone techniques. Grew up under fascism, Chailly remained apolitical and was a humanist. As he witnessed the brutality of war by serving in second World War, several compositions reflect his repudiation of war. Chailly was best known for his operas, many of which were composed to libretti by Dino Buzzati.
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Robert Grove Hughes (1933–2022) was an American composer, conductor, bassoonist and music scholar based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was known for his wide-ranging artistic interests—extending to poetry, performance art and social commentary—and advocacy of contemporary, often experimental music. San Francisco Chronicle critic Joshua Kosman described Hughes as a visionary and "musical Zelig" who "played a key role in a vast range of ambitious and influential musical projects." In the 1960s, Hughes co-founded the long-running Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and co-founded and led the award-winning Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra. In subsequent decades he co-founded and led the Arch Ensemble for Experimental Music with baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner and co-directed the performance group MA FISH CO with his wife, artist Margaret Fisher.
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