D’Est en Musique

Chantal Akerman was a pioneer in feminist and experimental filmmaking. Born in Brussels in 1950 and active until her death in 2015, Akerman made over 40 films in her lifetime, and is considered one of the most important auteurs of her generation. Akerman also wrote about her work and created over fifteen film installation works, often working from her feature films as a point of departure. Her work has been exhibited around the world including solo exhibitions at EyefilmMuseum; MoMA; MOCA, Toronto; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; and Centre Georges Pompidou, amongst many others. This year MoMA celebrated Akerman with a complete career retrospective, celebrating a multiyear effort by the Fondation Chantal Akerman and the Royal Film Archive of Belgium (CINEMATEK) to restore, document, and exhibit her career in film, installation, and writing. 

Described as a pianist of “power and introspection” (The New York Times), Sarah Rothenberg has a unique career as concert pianist, writer, producer, and creator of cross-disciplinary works where music, visual art, and literature meet, including A Proust Sonata, The Blue Rider in Performance, and Vienna 1900: In the Garden of Dreams. As a solo pianist she has performed at the Kennedy Center, Great Performers at Lincoln Center, Barbican Centre, the Concertgebouw, Palais des Beaux-Arts, the Gilmore Piano Festival, 92nd Street Y, Van Cliburn Foundation, etc. Recent solo premieres include Tyshawn Sorey’s For Julius Eastman and Vijay Iyer’s For My Father.  Rothenberg co-founded the Bard Music Festival and is artistic director of DACAMERA in Houston, Texas. Highlighting her lifelong passion for French culture and collaboration with the French, Rothenberg was awarded the medal of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 1999.

Sonia Wieder-Atherton is a renowned Franco-American cellist, renowned for her ability to transcend musical genres while bringing emotional depth to her interpretations. Her artistic career has been marked by the exploration of a wide range of repertoires, from classical music to more contemporary and experimental works. As a soloist, she has played for the Orchestre de Paris, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Gulbenkian Orchestra, among others. She regularly performs with artists such as Imogen Cooper, Elisabeth Leonskaja, and Sarah Rothenberg. She also initiates encounters with other artistic languages: the cinema of Chantal Akerman; literature through Shakespeare Bach with Charlotte Rampling; and, more recently, Carnets de là-bas featuring images by Clément Cogitore—a performance in which she recounts her years in the Soviet Union. Winner of several international awards, she continues to enrich the musical landscape with her innovative and moving interpretations, which make her a key figure in modern classical music. Her latest recording is devoted to Bach’s Suites for the label Outhere Music.

Founded in 1939 by Peter Yates and Frances Mullen in their modest Rudolf Schindler-designed Silverlake home, Monday Evening Concerts (MEC) is the world’s longest-running series devoted to contemporary music. Originally envisioned as a forum for displaced European emigrés and virtuoso Hollywood studio musicians to sink their teeth into the most challenging solo and chamber music of the day (such as the works of Charles Ives, Alexander Scriabin, Erik Satie, John Cage, and Béla Bartók), MEC has blossomed its way to international acclaim for its presentation of demanding, uncompromising and poetically-charged music—whether new or ancient.

For eight decades, musical history has been made at MEC, whether it was the American conducting debut of Pierre Boulez, world premieres of compositions by Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg and Harold Budd, the early-career performances of future classical music icons such as Michael Tilson Thomas and Marilyn Horne, or the first Los Angeles appearances of artists like Marino Formenti, the Arditti and JACK Quartets, and Steve Reich and Musicians.  

Monday Evening Concerts is a seven-time national winner of the ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming. The series is discussed in Susan Sontag’s essay “Pilgrimage: Tea with Thomas Mann” and in Eve Babitz’s “I Used to be Charming” as well as Eve’s Hollywood, and is the subject of a full-length book entitled Evenings On and Off the Roof: Pioneering Concerts in Los Angeles, 1939-1971 written by Dorothy Lamb Crawford.

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Conception: Chantal Akerman and Sonia Wieder-Atherton

Cello: Sonia Wieder-Atherton

Piano: Sarah Rothenberg

Music: Béla Bartók, Frédéric Chopin, Leoš Janáček, Bohuslav Martinů, Sergei Prokofiev,

Sergei Rachmaninoff, Maurice Ravel, Alfred Schnittke, Boris Tchaikovsky

Footage: Chantal Akerman’s documentary D’Est (1993)