The Oregonian: Review of Morten Lauridsen film

The film, directed by Michael Stillwater, is much like the composer’s music: spare, thoughtfully crafted, serene. It premiered in February at the American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs, Calif., won best documentary at the DC Independent Film Festival and received honorable mention at the Los Angeles Movie Awards. 

 

Nothing about the 69-year-old composer is edgy or avant-garde. He shuttles between Los Angeles, where he teaches composition at the University of California, and Waldron Island (pop. 104) in the San Juans, where he lives in a renovated general store that overlooks Puget Sound. It’s on the same beach he wandered as a boy, a place that means a great deal to him, he says. By the end of the film, you know why. You will also know something about his music, with its chantlike spirituality that occasionally rises in spiky dissonance.