Minimalist Icons Festival
WITH MUSIC: Minimalist Cinema — Minimalist Sound
Mini Film Festival at Now Instant
A cinematic celebration of minimalist music and transcendent moving image
Loading
Sat Apr 17, 2027 12pm
WITH MUSIC: Minimalist Cinema — Minimalist Sound
LA Phil Insight partners with Now Instant to present a full day of companion film screenings that build on the programming of LA Phil's Minimalist Icons festival. Moving beyond the concert hall and into the cinema, this exploration traces how the composers who are being celebrated on stage shaped, and were shaped by, a parallel history of minimalist cinema.
For a movement built on reduction and repetition, minimalism has proven remarkably expansive. What began in the 1960s as a rejection of excess in the visual art of Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt or in the looping phase patterns of Reich and Riley soon found its way into moving images, where filmmakers arrived at the same instincts independently: fixed cameras held in sustained meditation, stories told through accumulation rather than events, and image systems as exacting as any score.
The Mini-Minimalism Film Festival activates Now Instant, a magical micro-cinema tucked within Chinatown, through a durational screening featuring intimate documentary portraits of minimalist composers, feature films built around their scores, and landmark works where cinema discovered its own minimal grammar. Alongside these offerings, the Center for Visual Music will curate a special block of films highlighting the work of visual music pioneers who utilized custom-built instruments to create their abstract visions exploring image-as-rhythm long before genres were coined to identify such aesthetics. Alongside these offerings, the Center for Visual Music will also feature select works by contemporary artists influenced by the pioneers. The program closes with a live performance pairing minimal music with real-time video synthesis, bringing sound and image together in the same room. Presented alongside the LA Phil's concert programming, this is an invitation to experience minimalism moving fluidly between mediums.
LA Phil Insight is generously supported by Linda and David Shaheen.
Now Instant
939 Chung King Rd Los Angeles, California 90012
Also in this series:
Minimalist Icons Festival
WITH FILM: Minimalist Sound — Minimalist Cinema
An evening of art and music at Marciano Art Foundation
An exploration of classical minimalism’s impact on electronic music culture
Insight
Dive deeper into our concert programming with Insight activities ranging from commissioned installations and panel discussions to print publications and live podcast recordings.
Part of Insight Events
Rituals Festival
Making Meaning:
Ritual in Contemporary Life
A day of ideas at REDCAT
Join artists and scholars for a day-long exploration of rituals
Minimalist Icons Festival
WITH FILM: Minimalist Sound — Minimalist Cinema
An evening of art and music at Marciano Art Foundation
An exploration of classical minimalism’s impact on electronic music culture
Minimalist Icons Festival
Hiroshi Yoshimura: Flora / Green
Performance at REDCAT
Hear Wild Up perform the music of a legendary Japanese minimalist composer
Rituals Festival
BODY LIVE LIVE MUSIC: Topanga Tower
Performances at Topanga Tower
A pilgrimage. A progression.
Minimalist Icons Festival
WITH MUSIC: Minimalist Cinema — Minimalist Sound
Mini Film Festival at Now Instant
A cinematic celebration of minimalist music and transcendent moving image
Part of Minimalist Icons Festival
Minimalist Icons Festival
Wolfe & Mattingly
Green Umbrella New Music Series
A trio of takes on Minimalism, respectively composed for solo piano, string ensemble, and the entire orchestra.
Minimalist Icons Festival
Vasks, Pärt & Górecki
“There is so much divine power and beauty in the substance of music,” —Arvo Pärt
Minimalist Icons Festival
Steve Reich
A celebration of the artist The New York Times calls “one of our greatest living composers, with a recognizably pulsing sound and a place in the pantheon of minimalist pioneers.”
Minimalist Icons Festival
Anna Handler Conducts Philip Glass
Striking, powerful works that showcase the breadth of Glass’ abilities.
Minimalist Icons Festival
Meredith Monk Indra’s Net
The living legend, her acclaimed Vocal Ensemble, and the virtuosic Wild Up join forces to illuminate life's interconnectedness.
Minimalist Icons Festival
John Adams
A spotlight on music from the operas of the LA Phil’s Creative Chair.