“I’m very interested in the idea of a piece of music being a place to think.”

Max Richter and ACME: American Contemporary Music Ensemble at NPR Music in Washington, D.C.

More from NPR HERE.

On June 12th Max will be performing Recomposed: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons & Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works at the Royal Hospital Chelsea as part of the Live at Chelsea Summer Concert Series.  He will be joined by soloist Mari Samuelsen and the Aurora Orchestra.  Information and tickets HERE. 

To all who came to concerts, performed with me, and listened, thank you for a wonderful year!

The film Max Richter’s Sleep / United Kingdom (Director and screenwriter: Natalie Johns) — has been selected for the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.

Premiering in North America, the film follows Max as he navigates an ambitious performance of his acclaimed 8-hour opus SLEEP at an open air concert at Grand Park in Los Angeles. Alongside footage from similar concerts in Berlin, Sydney and Paris, the film plunges deep into the life and process of both the artist and his creative partner Yulia Mahr. 

More information via Sundance HERE.

I’ve done a lot now – 8 solo albums, ballets, operas, theatre productions, collaborations with other artists and musicians, as well as over 50 films. Every day of this beautiful life takes my breath away – but this day when the vinyls arrived was like no other. A vinyl collection of my work! The little boy in me can’t stop smiling. Thank you Deutsche Grammophon for putting together this collection.

VOYAGER: Essential Max Richter available HERE.

Max Richter will perform music from ‘The Leftovers’ & SLEEP in his final concerts of 2019 in Hamburg’s Laeiszhalle, Alte Oper in Frankfurt a.M., and Düsseldorf’s Tonhalle.

Composed in the summer of 2018, Max Richter’s Ad Astra score takes as its inspiration both the psychological dimension of its lead character, astronaut Roy McBride (Brad Pitt), as well as the physical journey he takes across space.

While developing his concept for the score Richter recalled NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Mission, launched in the late 1970s. He took the plasma wave data, detected and transmitted by the Voyager probes as they passed planets in our Solar System, and used this data (via a specifically commissioned virtual instrument) as an element in his writing.  As Roy passes through space we hear probe data from the same locations being applied to the score.

Ad Astra, adds Richter, involves the marriage of music and science – Richter’s compositions lean heavily on his love of mathematics. But they are also characteristically moving. The score employs electronics, strings and vocals to intensify onscreen emotions, to mark transitions between Roy McBride’s inner and outer worlds, and build what Vanity Fair has praised as “a stunning kind of symphony” of sound and cinematic images.

Listen HERE:

Woolf Works, from Wayne McGregor and the Royal Ballet with music by Max Richter was included in The Guardian’s Best Dance of the 21st Century. See the full list HERE.  The three-part ballet is based on the life and works of writer Virginia Woolf.

Listen to Three Worlds: Music From Woolf Works HERE.

‘To The Stars’ is the first single from the forthcoming soundtrack to Brad Pitt’s eagerly-anticipated new movie, AD ASTRA. The track is released today via Deutsche Grammophon, to coincide with the film’s release in cinemas. Listen HERE.

A sci-fi thriller set in the future, AD ASTRA stars Brad Pitt as an elite astronaut who travels to the outer edges of the solar system to find his missing father and unravel a mystery that threatens the survival of our planet. His journey will uncover secrets that challenge the nature of human existence and our place in the cosmos. More info on the film HERE.

The Blue Notebooks, Max Richter’s second album was chosen by The Guardian as one of the Best Classical Music Works of the 21st Century. LINK. The album was re-released in 2018 by Deutsche Grammophon.  Listen to the album HERE.