All language subtitles for Max Richters Sleep_720p web eng

Everything just takes a while.
It does.

You have to stay with it
in order to get the richness of it.

It's too easy to move on.

Like a sort of big sky... Mm.

..translates into
what you're doing.

How would that be
if you could see for miles around?

The horizon's all open.

A ritual which shifts
your state of mind...

..to take you somewhere else.

There's a sense of
sharing something. Mm.

It feels like it can stand
different kind of interventions.

I really love that.

I really love it
that it goes out and has a life...

Yeah. ..beyond us.

I wonder if
there's a storm coming.

They said there was going to be.
Yeah.

Music is my sort of vehicle
for travelling through the world,

you know, sort of
getting through life.

It's like I write music to do that.

It's just kind of odd.

It's kind of an odd thing to do.

Hello. How are you?
Fine. How are you?

Lovely to see you. Yeah, you too.

How are you?

Weird. Weird and tired.
Weird and tired!

And this piece is obviously
very extreme in some ways.

It's a gigantic thing.

To want to do such difficult things

is kind of odd as well.

It's a puzzle to me.

Guys, you're almost there.
All right.

Right, folks, make sure
your wristbands are on.

The moment that I saw
the complete eight-hour album,

I listened to it, like,
over and over.

But then I stopped listening to it.

I wanted the experience
to be new again for me.

After I booked the ticket,
I made this Instagram post

where it was, like, the gorgeous
cover photo of the moon

and I was like... So I'm gonna
see this eight-and-a-half hour,

204 movements, classical composition

and I think I made some joke

that I'm just gonna feel
crushingly alone

and cry the whole time.

So that's what I'm expecting.

I've tried not to have
too many expectations.

Like, I saw the pictures
that he posted last night

and I'm like, "Well, those cots
are really close together!"

You know, I mean,
you have your own space,

but, uh, usually
I'm much more of a loner

as far as not being
so close to others.

MUSICIANS WARM UP

I've never actually watched
something continuously

for eight hours,

so just hearing them warming up
has me pretty excited.

I mean, this is probably, like,
the ideal way

you want to experience
something like this,

being around someone you care about
or just other people.

I don't know how to describe it.

It's just kinda like...
It hits your soul.

It just makes me feel, like,
connected to this world.

I guess what I was aiming for

is this sense of connecting
to origins somehow

and fundamentals.

It's almost like,
"Can we just start over, please?"

Hi, hello.

Welcome to this performance
of Sleep,

an eight-hour lullaby.

I'm joined this evening
by the ACME Ensemble

and Grace Davidson.

APPLAUSE

A few more thank-yous,

first of all to Chris Ekers
for his wonderful sound,

to Steve Abbott
for joining all the dots,

and especially to Yulia,
my creative partner,

whose vision is
a big part of this piece.

There are no rules. Um...

Listen as you like,
sleep as you like.

Maybe switch the phones off

and enjoy the trip.

We'll see you on the other side.

APPLAUSE

MUSICIANS TUNE UP

MUSIC STARTS

When we were younger,

we had small children
and we had no money,

so, of course, when Max
went away to do his concerts,

I could never go,
and so I would stay behind.

It was really lovely when
people started streaming concerts

because suddenly I could listen in,

so I started to,
every time he'd go away,

I'd listen in to the concert
and see how, you know...

You feel nervous for your partner,
you want it to go well,

you're interested in how it goes,

you kind of want to be there,
so it was my way of experiencing it.

Yulia would be listening in.

Of course, you know, if I'm
on the other side of the planet,

it would be at some crazy hour
in the middle of the night.

I'd be exhausted.

You know,
I'd been with the kids all day.

I was so tired, so I would
almost always fall asleep.

And pretty soon, I realised that

there's this incredible thing
that happens

when you start just drifting
in and out of this dreamy space.

And kind of waking up

and liminal spaces
would start to develop

and you start to listen
in a totally different way

to how you normally listen to a CD

or a disc or even a concert.

And it becomes a...

It can... It becomes a very
emotional listening experience.

So when Max would come back,
I'd start to talk to him about this

and I was like, "We have
to do something with this

"because this is
an incredible thing."

He said, "Well,
it's funny you should say that

"because here's this piece
I've been working on since 1995."

And he starts getting out
these pieces of paper,

showing me these pieces
of paper and saying,

"I've been thinking about this
myself in a different form."

We sort of got into
this conversation about

would it be interesting
to make a piece

which is in some way made

to exist in that space

or to kind of have
that sort of conversation

with, you know, the sleeping mind?

You know, the sleeping mind is
as valid and valuable

and, in fact, essential to us
actually

in terms of
building our waking life.

When we're sleeping,
we're not absent.

We're just... It's a different
kind of cognitive state.

And so we brought
these two ideas together really

and started to develop this idea

for the piece as it is now.

Life is busy
and life is getting busier.

I've never heard anyone say,

"Oh, things are just getting
so much slower."

Everything is always up.

It's moving forwards.

That's how life works.

Things just speed up.

That, in a way,
suits corporations.

But does it suit individuals
as well?

I don't know.

So I wanted to make a piece
which...

It's got an element of a
sort of quiet protest about it.

Just to kind of -
take a look at this.

And offer a landscape

to withdraw from that for a minute,

step off the wheel and take stock.

It was a very big thing

to bring this into the world
and to get it actually made.

That was a two,
two-and-a-half-year process,

something like that,
and during that period

when Max was composing,
I was starting to look around

for the kind of venues
we could go to,

what kind of ways we could talk
about this project to people.

I always think Yulia's
the brains of the outfit.

She comes from anthropology
and film,

so her universe is visual,
performance,

storytelling from that standpoint.

I was developing, really,
this language

of talking about issues that
were really important to me.

My family were refugees

and I wanted to really explore that
from every possible angle.

One of the things that was
really important to me

was that this piece
should be about community

and should be about connection.

Or at least providing a space
for it.

Whether it happens or not, I mean,
that's down to an individual person.

It doesn't have to happen either,
but we're missing that, aren't we?

That was one of the very first
conversations we had.

We have this eight-hour piece.
Where does it go?

How do we stage it?

What happens with this piece

in order to foster
that kind of environment

where something like that
can happen?

Max and Yulia showed me drawings

of this concept of musicians
surrounded by sleeping people.

I went with a friend

and all those strangers
sleeping together,

open postures,

somehow takes you away from the
individual details of your own life.

A couple of friends said,
"This is very disturbing."

Some people couldn't imagine
being in a place like that.

But the people
I could connect to understood,

there's something about hearing it

and not necessarily watching
the performance.

There's some deep memory of
being a child and being sung to

when you're drifting off.

So it's such a tender offering.

SOPRANO SINGS

As a cathedral, we wanted to have
a kind of connection

with these problems with refugees,

and, um... and to make a connection
with an artwork, with music.

It was this sculpture by Koen Theys,

with 12 bronze mattresses
where people slept,

which helped us
to have this crazy idea

of having Sleep in our cathedral.

And now we have 400 of these beds.

It was a very big unknown
for all of us

who worked to prepare for it.

At the same time,
there was this vibe

of "this is something very special",

which has never happened
and probably never will again.

I think we've had something like
250 enquiries for the show

and I think it's about 18

that actually we've been
able to put on.

Each show takes more or less
two years to pull off

from the first conversations
to when they finally go on.

For every venue,
it's a real labour of love as well.

Yeah, so it's a big juggernaut
of a thing,

but it's so worth it.

APPLAUSE

Welcome to Max Richter's Sleep

at Grand Park,
presented by the Music Center.

Tonight's performance
is the first outdoor

and the largest ever.

We are hopefully unplugging
from our everyday life

to experience
this beautiful concert together

right in the heart of downtown LA.

Max basically says,
"You can walk around,

"you can sit up, you can lie down,
you can disconnect, you can sleep."

And I think that freedom sort of
that Max wrote into the piece

and into the presentation
of the piece,

I thought it would get augmented
by putting it outdoors

and sort of giving it
that additional freedom.

SOPRANO SINGS

He was never interested
in talking to an audience

of 100 people
who know about classical music,

so he engaged in a language
which is a plain-spoken language

because he wants to connect
to a lot of people.

And that's immediately frowned on

within a lot of
classical communities.

If you're popular,
that can't be good.

And obviously we weren't
paying attention to any of that

because we're not interested
in that conversation at all.

Our conversation is about
talking to a lot of people

and talking about a different way
of listening to music.

There are precedent pieces.

In Indian classical music,
you have overnight ragas

and there's gallery work
from the '60s of Fluxus.

And the Bach Goldberg Variations

which were supposedly written
for overnight performance.

It's not like sonic wallpaper

which is just quietly bubbling
in the background.

It's an artwork,
and it's to be experienced,

not necessarily to be listened to,

but to be experienced.

You know, in the way that we
experience a landscape, we're in it.

People are free to do
what they want, really, in the show.

We didn't want too many rules

and that's reflected in all
the concerts. They're all different.

In Berlin, everyone shoved
their beds together

and you had families
all sleeping side by side.

It offers something where people
can feel cocooned, safe somehow.

It's not a performance
in the traditional sense.

If you play a gig,

you're projecting this material
really strongly,

you're trying to tell a story...

..whereas in the case of
a Sleep performance,

the dynamics
are completely different.

Those people sleeping
are the story.

10:28pm. To sleep,
perchance to dream.

Sombre. Life noises.

The wild sirens,
chattering of people checking in

melts with the music,

creates a tone like in the movies

after something serious
has happened.

I heard about the concert

and I was like, "Oh, I don't think
my wife would want to go.

"It sounds too weird."
And then I told her about it.

She was like, "It's sleep and
it's music? What's not to like?"

Like, I was surprised
she waited as long as she did

to say something about it.

Cos I guess she had
known about it for a while.

I was really happy
to see her asleep.

Yeah, I was a little worried that
because we were out in the open

among all these strangers that...

And the bugs. And the bugs.

..she was gonna end up being
not happy,

but apparently, her body was like,
"No, I'm gonna go to sleep now."

Like, I zonked out,

like, pretty much 15, 20 minutes
into the concert, I was out.

Legit, like, all night.

Yeah. Which is surprising.

Being a woman
in our relationship,

you are kind of on guard,
always watching your back,

you don't know who's looking
at you, what they're thinking,

what they're thinking of you and how
you're making them feel, you know.

I feel like I always...
always feel, like, unsafe.

You obviously have
something in common

cos you've all come together
around this event.

It's just fascinating.
You see people.

You're like, "I wonder
would we be hanging out together?

"Would we be buddies if I went over

"and, like, struck up a conversation
with you right now?"

Like, yeah, you did feel
kind of safe and protected.

The first one was memorable
in that it was just so terrifying

because we just did not know
how to play this piece.

How do you rehearse
something that size?

The gallery is full of
these amazing curios

of 19th century science.

It seemed in a way
an appropriate place to do it

because Sleep has some of its
origins in, I guess, sleep science.

We rehearsed it overnight
and then we had the next day,

and I was up fixing the parts,
all the mistakes I discovered,

all the technical stuff.

And then we played overnight
live on Radio 3.

They broadcast it all night long,

so it was kind of
a baptism of fire.

I was very lucky to be invited

to be one of the people
to fall to sleep

to his music
at the Wellcome Foundation.

I think it broke a world record

for the longest continuous piece
on the radio.

Once the piece kicked off,
it was clear

that there was something wrong
with the piano

that Max was playing at,

that there was some really
tinny sound coming out of that.

And then one of the crew crept up,

climbed on top
of this grand piano

and started trying
to investigate what...

But, of course, the piece
had to keep on going. This was

a live broadcast of this piece that
was gonna go on for eight hours

and there was no way we were
stopping and starting again.

We got through it
and it had a real kind of energy,

it had a real sort of
gravitational force around it.

It just seemed
to kind of affect people,

so that was exciting.

My work comes out of the polarity

between a very straightforward,
classical,

conservatoire, university,
composer education

and my enthusiasm
for electronic music,

ambient music,
the studio as instrument.

It has its roots
in the kind of Renaissance,

where music was structured
very geometrically.

It's also a rejection
of super-complicated modernism

which I was schooled in,

but which I felt
had really lost its connection

with a broader audience.

I felt like I wanted
to build a language

which had a kind of directness.

When Max and I first met,

I was giving a talk about
maths and symmetry.

I think there was
an immediate connection.

I mean, there's always been

an immediate connection
between maths and music.

Like every piece, it's a big series
of "what if" questions.

I started thinking about
what kind of music

would I want if I was sleeping?

And I started thinking
I would like to feel

that if I wake up in the middle,
I want to know where I am.

Mathematics is actually
the science of patterns

and music is the art of patterns.

And that's the connection.

So, you know, you take something
simple, like the Fibonacci numbers.

So these are numbers which go:

1, 1, 2, 3,

5, 8, 13.

You get the next number

by adding the two
previous numbers together.

Now, these have a natural growth
which is what nature uses a lot,

so the number of petals
on a flower

is invariably
a Fibonacci number,

the way that shells grow
or pine cones or pineapples...

You'll see these numbers
all over the place.

But these are also numbers
that composers love using,

so you see Debussy, Bartok
very deliberately using them

to give a sense of growth
in their pieces.

One of the things
that connects the world of art

and the world of mathematics
and science as well

is that all of these
are actually our response

to the natural world around us.

They're our language
trying to help us navigate our way

through the kind of chaos
that we live in.

I felt like slightly in freefall
when I was writing it.

I was like, "I don't really know
if this is gonna work."

When you're composing,
the notes you're writing,

you're very much writing them
in relation to everything

that's happened already and
everything that's gonna happen.

When there's a structure that big,

you can't hold it all in your mind
any more,

so you really have
to just write the moment,

which is freaky

and goes against
all your compositional training.

When you're recording, you know,
sections of 30 or 40 minutes,

you can't do that on tape.
And it's eight hours of multi-track.

So it broke the machine
in all sorts of different ways

and we had to invent
new ways of working.

For me, that is also the exciting
thing about creative work.

You've got this space
that you know how to do that.

I know how to write Max Richter
music up to this point.

But actually Sleep is stepping
out of that pool of light

into something else,
into the dark,

and just finding what's out there.

I always describe it

as if all the happiness
had left the world,

but I was good with it,

as if there was nothing else
to lose.

Especially if I'm full of anguish,
if I need to relax

or I need to stop worrying about
what's gonna happen in the future.

Max's music...

..cleans your soul,
if you want to say it that way.

It is as if
he had found something

that has already existed for,
I don't know,

thousands of years,

that is familiar to humans

like the sound of the sea

or the grass with the wind.

It is something
that makes us soothe and relax

and, and... and makes you feel that
everything is OK.

As if all humans
spoke the same language

and then we have to translate it
to English or Spanish

or whatever language you speak.

Everybody can understand it

and you don't need to be
a special kind of person

to know what he wants to say
and then the feelings are immediate.

It was not new. It was as if
I had been there all my life.

It was just like a continuation

of something
that you already know very well.

Like kissing your mother

or being with someone you love
very much.

I talked to a friend
of mine, David Eagleman,

he's a neuroscientist,

just to check that my instincts
about sleep music

were not actually stupid.

He pointed me at some research

about how sound and
a sleeping mind can join up.

To my knowledge, it's the first time
that somebody has said,

"All right, we're gonna write
eight hours of music

"and we're gonna try to do things

"to keep people
in a state of sleep."

So one of the first things
that Max and I talked about

was about repetition of music
during sleep and how...

Essentially what happens
in the brain

is you've got lots of cells,
86 billion neurons,

and they're all doing
their own thing,

but when you fall asleep,
they come into concert more

and move as a group

which is why if you put
electrodes on the head,

you can measure the slow wave

happening in the brain
during sleep.

So we talked about
the kind of rhythms

that would be appropriate
for that sort of thing,

about the kind of repetition

that sleep represents,
the sleeping brain.

So Max set out to make sure that
the music he was writing

was sort of, you know,
rhythmically consonant

with slow-wave sleep.

Sleep has a very particular flavour.

It's a very particular colour,
right,

because it's all about the bottom
of the frequency spectrum.

And almost all of sleep happens
from, like, 100 hertz down,

which is a space
which isn't really available

with acoustic instruments.

In the natural world, we hear
those frequencies in thunderstorms.

And those sorts of things.

And that's in a way why
they have a magical quality

because we can't actually
really make those sounds

with acoustic instruments
very easily,

or we can but only very quiet.

And for a piece to be structured

around that bit
of the frequency spectrum

is interesting to do,

which is why the synthesisers
are so incredible

because they unlock
that bit of the spectrum.

SYNTHESISERS PLAY

I was about 13 when I first heard
electronic music, really.

SYNTHESISERS PLAY

On a TV show, they'd used
Kraftwerk's Autobahn

and when I heard the opening,

I mean, it was like being struck
by lightning for me.

You feel like you're interacting
with a thing which has a life

because the sound is never the same.
You know, the next day,

even the same patch
sounds different. Very organic.

I set out on this mission

to try and discover,
A, what this sound was

and B,
how could I get my hands on it?

And at that time, a synthesiser
cost as much as a house.

I got schematics

and a soldering iron
and bags of components

and just started in my bedroom
building synthesisers

and, you know, just tried
to make those sounds.

And that went sort of together
with studying academic music.

I always felt that was quite
natural, really, those two things.

The way the music is made is
quite uncharacteristic for me.

It has a lot of kind of affirmation
in the way it's structured.

It's sort of asking a question

and then giving you the answer
that you want.

It feels good as it goes by
because of that.

So you kind of know
where you're going all the time,

and then it goes there.

Which is like, you know,
not what happens in real life.

So it's a wish fulfilment for
"if only life were like this".

Look at that, Max.

It's really beautiful.

It's pretty awesome, yeah.

The thing I find
that's so incredible

is when you're sitting
in your office or studio

and you're trying to conjure up
this whole world,

and then you come out here

and it just kind of pours
out of you, doesn't it?

We met for the first time twice.

HE CHUCKLES

It was the Edinburgh Festival

and there was a performance
of the Mahabharata,

you know, this wonderful epic.

So there's, like,
about 100 people on the stage

and about 11 of us
in the audience.

I'm sitting there in this thing

and I keep, you know,
just kind of looking at this

one woman on the stage.

And I'm just like,
"Wow, she looks amazing!

"I'd really love
to get to know her."

And then I walked
out of the theatre

and I was like,
"You're never gonna see her again,

"just get over it, forget about it,
get on with your life."

And I love that phase so much
when everything is possible still,

when there's nothing in the way
and everything's just...

Then we met again at a theatre

that I was involved with
and Yulia was involved with.

I was working in
a theatre company for a while.

That's where I met Max
because I gave him his first job.

SHE LAUGHS

Like a sort of energy exchange...

So we were just chatting away, like,
in the back of the theatre basically

while we were supposed
to be working.

The kind of unmade works,

so the works without any mistakes
in them. Yeah.

And that's... So exciting.

When we first met,
that was what drew us together,

I think, was talking.

Yeah, we were just like...

We just talked about life,
the universe and everything.

And that was that.

I just thought I'd just met
the most interesting

and kind of kindest
and most thoughtful person.

Like, I still think that.

It's tough to make enough money
to feed three kids as an artist,

but it's also been an incredibly
interesting journey.

We both had quite complicated
childhoods in different ways.

And there is a flavour to that,
isn't there,

that affects your whole life,

so one of the things
that was very comforting

and easy for us together
was the fact that we shared that,

and, in a way, that's another
lifelong journey, isn't it,

is processing that.

And if you're kind of shy

and poetic like he was,
then you do that through music.

I started making records

and I made Memoryhouse in 2002.

It was almost like
a series of questions

to see if a language could do
all these things I wanted to do.

And kind of no-one heard
that record.

I mean, other musicians heard it

and it had a kind of a little,
tiny, culty sort of audience.

But, you know,
the record label was shut down.

We never got to play it.

Nothing happened.

It really took a while,
I mean years and years and years,

before anyone really
paid attention at all.

You know, the number of times
we had to, like, go to Plan B.

We were, like,
moving house randomly.

You know, it was just very chaotic.

I mean, it's tough. It's tough
to make a living. It really is.

Trying to, you know,
make records to a high standard

with real musicians on them,
it costs money,

which I didn't have.

I remember at
the Blue Notebooks sessions,

we recorded it in one day.

One afternoon, in fact,
with the strings,

cos that's the money we had.

And I remember, you know,
trying to get home from a session

and not being able to get
any money out of the bank

because we had no money.

That's the constant question
for artists, isn't it?

Do you persevere?

When he did Vivaldi Recomposed,

he was still walking
40, 60 minutes across town

to interviews because
we couldn't afford the fare,

and we certainly went
through many years

where we would feed the children
rather than ourselves.

I mean, most people do not make
a living in any art form,

so what do you do when you're faced
with that and you have children?

You're so responsible
for these little people

and you can't muck it up.

SHE LAUGHS

Not bad, Al! You haven't played that
all summer. Pretty nice.

I got that one wrong. Hm?
I didn't do that one.

Yeah, but you did it the same
both times, so it's cool.

That was really nice. Really nice.

I mean, I didn't support
the family for years.

We just kind of scratched by.

And I think if I had been able
to imagine doing anything else,

then I probably would have.

Eventually, I got ill
because I was just so malnourished.

You just think you're somehow
invincible, don't you?

And you keep going.

Your body's showing you
all the signs of,

"You can stop now,"

and you go, "No, no, it's OK.
I can keep going."

Obviously, you can't in the end,
so I did become quite sick.

I guess it's the first time
we've really thought about

how we're living our lives,
how I'm... what I'm doing.

I mean, of course it's...

You know, the fact of our mortality
is real,

but it's only real
when it's real, you know,

because we keep it away.

We keep those thoughts away
by doing other things.

Quite a big bit of thinking
about what to, you know...

what those things mean,

but then do what, you know?

Give up and do what?
I don't know.

I guess things do add up
over time, you know.

And the Blue Notebooks did sort of
catch people's ears somehow.

And it just seemed to...
It started something.

I mean, we got the opportunity
to premiere Memoryhouse

ten years after it was released,

which we did in the Barbican
in London.

The place was full and it was
like, you know, a love-in.

I mean, it was like a homecoming.

There was something wonderful
about that, you know.

To just kind of keep going,
and ten years later here we are.

Writing a piece like Sleep
takes over two years.

So those two years
have to be funded.

And the way we found
our way through eventually

was we came up with
a little formula, actually,

of how to feed ourselves,

which was that Max would do
film work and that film work,

the money would go back
into the art, always.

So that he could, at night,
work on Sleep.

I got into the habit
of writing at night

when the kids were small.

We used to put them to bed

and then I guess my work days
were kind of

eight or nine o'clock
in the evening till about three.

Sort of. Something like that.

Until I kind of fell off
my chair, basically.

In a way, making creative things
is also kind of...

I feel like it's a kind of
self-medicating in a way, you know.

So you write the piece that
you wish someone had written

so you can listen to it.

HE CHUCKLES

This sort of slightly obsessive
involvement with music

probably kept me going.

To the edge of the woods before...
Cos we don't want to be in the dark.

Well, I don't mind
being in the dark.

It's kind of adventurous...

INAUDIBLE

I think of making a piece
of writing and creative work

as sort of... It's like moving
from a space which we know

into a space we don't know.

And that's
the kind of interesting part.

And actually it hardly matters
what's there.

It's that little process
of just stepping out

into somewhere you don't know.

At a certain point, it's almost like
the piece starts dreaming.

SOPRANO SINGS

I am a visual artist,
so I'm very project-oriented.

I'm making projects that usually
take me a year or two to complete,

so there's a lot of things
to work out.

This, because it was so durational,

gave me the opportunity to resolve
some questions that I was having

about what direction I was taking
with certain things.

My mind was wandering
and things were happening,

but that music was there and
it was permeating into my mind.

It's one thing
that really intrigues me

about this project of his
that he certainly had intentions

when he started it,

but knowing what that experience
would be like for other people

and those random factors
that come in...

What influence is a sound

on what's happening in your mind
as you're kind of drifting off.

I am kind of at a point in life
where I feel like

I need to make the best use
of my time,

and time is something
that's really important.

I mean, daily life is hectic
when you have a family

and you're worrying about, you know,
pick-up time from school

and trying to balance
everything else out,

trying to fit in everything
I want to fit in the day

in the time that I have.

Mixing that
with my own personal work

and then just kind of keeping
our house in order. It's busy.

SHE CHUCKLES

When you have
these other factors involved,

like Max has, you know,
people that are laying on cots

and listening, you know,
to that music,

how does that change it?
What does that do?

I'm intrigued with
starting with an idea

and seeing, you know, how does it
shape and form and change

as you introduce other people
into it,

as everybody, I'm sure, had their
own kind of unique experience.

I don't know who these people are,
you know, what has drawn them here.

Experiencing Sleep live
is really not like anything else.

Who does this? Who makes, you know,

an eight-hour-long
musical composition

that lasts that duration, that's set
up for people to fall asleep to?

It's not like anything else.

When I sit down at the piano
at the beginning of the night,

there are 200-something pages
of piano music to play through.

You know, there's a big score,
which plays from beginning to end.

I'm probably on the stage

for about seven-and-a-half
of the eight hours.

Something like that, overall.
Which is a lot.

I get breaks, just to kind of
grab a bite to eat

or a cup of coffee or something.

And, in fact,
all the players get breaks.

It's very tough
on the string players, actually.

A lot of the piece is
these sort of very sustained tones.

Very quiet, you know,

which is the hardest thing
for string players to do.

I kind of kidded myself
when we first started doing it

that it was fine,
everyone would be fine, no problem.

But it is actually a problem.
It's really hard.

It's just really physically
and mentally tough.

First of all to be concentrating
for that amount of time,

cos even though, you know,
I'm a pianist, you know,

the notes come into your eyes
and they come out of your fingers,

you know, that bit is
sort of automatic,

but you're still
having to concentrate.

I mean, doing anything solidly
for eight hours is hard.

And, you know, you get achy
and stiff and sore

and, yeah, it's tough.

I love to just come off the stage

on one of my little breaks,
just to hear it.

Out in the house we have this
sort of magical cathedral sound,

you know, and I love that sound.

That's the sound
that the piece was written for.

So I just wander around
and have a listen

and just kind of see
what people are up to.

Cos that's really nice for me,
just to kind of check in with,

you know, how everyone is
sort of finding it.

What's beautiful
is just seeing the effect

the piece is having on people.
I mean, that's an amazing thing

because you don't really ever
get to see that

in such an intimate way.

And just being able to see,
you know, somebody sleeping there,

or, you know,
doing their yoga or something

or, you know, walking about
and thinking their thoughts.

You just kind of get
a much bigger sense

of what the piece is doing.

Every performance
is really, really special.

It's one of these
sort of paradoxical things.

It's incredibly hard to do it,
but it's kind of so worth it.

It costs so much to do it
and to try to make it happen,

you know, on a personal level,
and yet it's so satisfying.

Every second is a deliberate second.

Every note is deliberate.

So it was a massive undertaking

and that's what's amazing, for me, I
suppose, that somebody can do that,

that they have that much staying
power with a creative project

that they can see
something like this through.

And that he can perform it.
I mean, I don't think I could.

I couldn't play for eight hours
straight.

That's what he's brought to me
and my work,

his seeing through the...
seeing through difficulties.

It's made me more of a fighter
for what I believe in

and more committed, in a way,
to shaking things up

and trying new things, you know,
and not stopping.

You know, when we were young
and he was putting out his work,

year after year after year,

and, you know, when you're young
and you're starting out,

you do get kicked around a lot
and some of the things

that happened to him,
I would just... I mean,

would have sent me to bed,
crying, and yet he is...

It's just a river passing by
for him.

I remember talking to Yulia about
this at the time, you know,

and I was making decisions about

how the Blue Notebooks should be
and what we would do with it,

and she said, "The thing is,
you know, if the record fails,

"and you've made compromises,

"then you're going to be
really annoyed,

"but if it fails
and you did exactly what you wanted,

"then who cares?"

So that's always been the MO
sort of going forward.

Just kind of always bet the farm.

HE LAUGHS

We didn't have a farm!

But, you know,
we always bet the farm.

For me, it's all about Max's smile.

He could have been anybody.
I don't care what he does!

I mean, I don't care what Max does.

He doesn't have to be
a composer for me.

I just love his smile and I still
love his smile 27 years later,

so it's all about that, really.

He's a vulnerable man

and, musically,
he's not afraid to show it

and I think he's not afraid
to talk about vulnerability

and that's something quite precious

because everybody there
is vulnerable in that moment

when they're all sleeping
in a room together.

And I think that fragility
and vulnerability in life

is something that
he wants to talk about.

It goes right the way through to
an understanding of the world

and humaneness, I would say,
is the big word we try, you know...

I mean, we're all flawed
human beings, right?

We don't manage it all the time!
Or most of the time.

But we try,
and that's the thing, isn't it?

I have such admiration for his
determination and his perseverance.

The fact that he can just...
He does it, you know.

That's a big thing for me.

I think my admiration for him
has increased through this project.

Their collaboration is so gorgeous.

To be ambitious
for something that ethereal...

..is an...unusual thing.

I don't see it that much.
I see people ambitious

for large objects
that will stay there forever.

I see people be ambitious
for movies or something,

but to be ambitious
for a moment at night

with strangers together?

I just think that's...
that's just glorious.

Experiences like this
I think remind people

that even in a world where
people are very busy,

that if you were to place
the arts back into society,

there are these rejuvenating
types of experiences

that can happen between people.

By having an eight-hour performance,
in a world where,

like, three minutes
is what is commercially viable,

I think that already flips
expectations on its head.

I teach. I also play.

And my mission, first and foremost,

when working with new students
is, typically,

to get them to realise that
the sounds that you hear,

you can wield them as well.

You have the ability
to make meaning out of sound.

It's like the craziest magic.

And then, by having
that sort of instrumentation,

I think it says, like,
you could have a violin or a cello

right next to a synthesiser.

That gives them
a window into something

they may not have known
they didn't know

and gives them the tools necessary
to maybe be the next Max Richter.

I don't know. Maybe.

I took the spectrum,
the sonic spectrum,

that the unborn baby hears
in the womb...

..which is basically
no high frequencies

because the mother's body
filters all of those.

So I've used that spectrum
for almost the entire piece.

And then,
around sort of seven hours,

the spectrum opens up, so you get
more and more high frequencies.

So there's kind of a sunrise.

An acoustic sunrise.

I think there's something
very fundamental about that spectrum

because that obviously goes to
our first memories

of being a person.

Even before we're born,
we have this auditory memory

which has a very particular colour.

So that's how the sort of sonics
of the piece work on us.

5:49am. Awake.

Just saw a stray cat,
lots of sleeping people.

Feel quite rested. Very alert.

A little emotional.

People actually were
pretty respectful.

Not a lot of chatter.

There was a woman
with a bathing suit on.

A guy with
a "rock, paper, scissor" tattoo

that I thought was sign language.

It made me reflect
on my relationship,

knowing all the difficulties
that we've been through

as a couple,
all the tears, all the fights.

It's all worth it,
like, to be with Terri

because I love her so much.

SOPRANO SINGS

I was asleep for some of it
and awake for some of it

and it kind of just blended
with dreaming.

It was restful,
but it was like a journey as well.

There's parts of it that I recognise

and there's parts where I go like,
"Was I asleep?"

I don't even remember anymore

because it was just
all so very fluid.

SOPRANO SINGS

Falling asleep around
a lot of people we didn't know,

just seeing how other people
interact with the music as well,

it was really insightful
and moving.

SOPRANO SINGS

It takes years
to get to the place

where it really starts
and can really take off.

I feel like we're at
the beginning of something.

Just starting, really.
And that's what's incredible for us.

What if you slept?

And what if, in your sleep,
you dreamed?

And what if, in your dreams,
you went to heaven...

..and there you plucked
a strange and beautiful flower?

And what if, when you awoke...

..you had that flower
in your hand?

Ah, what then?

SOPRANO SINGS

MUSIC FADES

CHEERING AND WHISTLING

WHOOPING

INAUDIBLE

INAUDIBLE

It was kind of like

a wave would come over you
and just wake you.

You'd hear just, like, the rub
of the strings - rrrrr!

It felt almost like a massage,
but inside.

I'm still in a trance, I think.

And in my head there's
a whole world of creatures.

The woman who sang,

it was like a mermaid
that was singing to me

that wanted to grab me
and pull me into the ocean.

Max was for me a kind of fox.

Very gentle,
but also very sneaky, in a way,

that he trapped us from minute one.

He just did it
in such a beautiful, elegant way.

INAUDIBLE

SHE CHUCKLES