Kent Nagano
Seeking New Shores | Neue Wege, neue Klänge
Director: Oliver Becker
Length: 58 min. 15 sec.
16:9 shot in digital video 25P / stereo
© 2006, commissioned by Loft Music
The year 2006 marks a turn­ing point in Kent Nagano's ca­reer: the ex­cep­tion­al con­duct­or bids farewell to long-lived and suc­cess­ful en­gage­ments as a prin­cip­al con­duct­or both with the Los Angeles Op­era and with the Deutsches Sym­phonie-Or­chester Ber­lin. In the same year, he has met two new chal­lenges: he has be­come the new Mu­sic Dir­ect­or of the Montreal Sym­phony Or­ches­tra, and he has be­gun his col­lab­or­a­tion as the Mu­sic Dir­ect­or with the Bay­erische Staat­sorchester in Mu­nich.
The film de­liv­ers in­sight in­to this phase of say­ing good­bye - not only to this former artist­ic activ­it­ies, but also to his home in Cali­for­nia. A couple of days off in March mark the mo­ments when Kent Nagano looks back on his per­son­al and mu­sic­al de­vel­op- ment in a private at­mo­sphere. San Fran­cisco, Los Angeles and his ho­met­own Morro Bay are the main loc­a­tions in ad­di­tion to a photo shoot­ing for the renowned "Surf Magazine" with the con­duct­or, who has been a pas­sion-ate surfer since his boy­hood. Partly pre­de­ter­mined through the jour­ney across Cali­for­nia and Kent Nagano's nu­mer­ous mu­sic­al per­form­ances, this por­trait of the con­duct­or fol­lows the genre char­ac­ter­ist­ics of a road movie: the in­def­in­ite abey­ance in between de­par­ture and ar­rival, or so to speak the state of "be­ing on the way" form the emo­tion­al prin­cip­al theme of the film.