‘I won't work on a more important film,' says Ken Burns about ‘American Revolution' series

Boston Globe

09-04-2025

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The series itself, which is co-produced and directed by Burns, Botstein, and David Schmidt, is slated for release this fall. However, Boston audiences can join
that conversation on April 16 at Symphony Hall, where Burns and Botstein are hosting a preview evening presented by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and GBH. The event will feature clips from the film, a panel discussion featuring Burns, Botstein, and three historians, and performances from an ensemble of musicians including violinist Johnny Gandelsman, who curated the soundtrack for the series, and American roots multi-instrumentalist and singer Rhiannon Giddens.
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Regardless of the subjects, music has always played a central role in Burns's documentaries, and this one is no different. Even though the filmmakers might not all be musicians, 'the language of our editing room is musical,' Burns said. 'Hold that another beat, hold that another measure.'
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Burns compared the documentary itself to a 'symphony in three movements,' with the first of those mostly focusing on New England, and Botstein said the Symphony Hall event would definitely include 'some clips that highlight the events of that week 250 years ago.' But it won't retell the 'bloodless, gallant myth' of the American Revolution story that many are accustomed to, Burns said.
'If anyone could tell this story with any modicum of representation of the complex sides of it, and not the way we were taught at school,' it'd be Burns, said Giddens, who previously worked with Burns on his 2019 'Country Music' series.
Rhiannon Giddens. (Ebru Yildiz)
Ebru Yildiz
'I think it will be hugely new to everyone,' said Burns, hoping that audiences would feel connected to not just the 'top-down stories' of famous historical figures, 'but also hundreds of characters that they've never heard about.' These include Irish soldiers fighting for both the British and colonial armies, Native Americans, French fighters, Black people, women, and dedicated loyalists, he said. 'It's going to come at you from lots of different angles.'
Gandelsman produced upwards of 100 tracks for the series, and with the Symphony Hall event's performances, 'we wanted to create something that represents the variety of the music that was created for the film,' said the violinist in a phone interview.
The sonic fabric of the documentary includes classical and baroque concert pieces, fiddle tunes, folk songs, Native American music, and Afro-Cuban percussion. As a recurring theme for the series, Burns chose a Scottish lament by composer James Scott Skinner called 'Hector the Hero,' which dates to 1903 but has 'all the elements' of a traditional tune, he said, much like Jay Unger's 1982 'Ashokan Farewell,' which provided a musical foundation for 1990's 'The Civil War' series.
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Gandelsman, a member of string quartet Brooklyn Rider (which releases a new album, 'The Four Elements,' May 23) as well as Silkroad Ensemble, has been a regular collaborator with the Burns team since 'The Vietnam War.' Many of the performers on the soundtrack have Silkroad connections as well, including Giddens, who is presently artistic director of the organization, and Yo-Yo Ma, who founded it. Those artists in turn suggested music they could contribute and recruited additional collaborators such as Providence-based Black roots musician Jake Blount, whom Giddens thought would bring 'a really good kind of approximation of what the fiddle might sound like in the colonial era.'
'Some of it was definitely figured out on the fly' in the studio, said Giddens, whose contributions to the soundtrack included 'Pompey Ran Away,' which was published in 1782 as a 'Virginia Negro Jig', and a lullaby in Scottish Gaelic that was written by a composer in the Carolinas.
'A lot of people don't know that the Scots were involved in the revolution, and lot of them were Gaelic speakers,' said Giddens, who releases a North Carolina-specific album with Justin Thompson, 'What did the Blackbird Say to the Crow,' on April 18.
'It was really, really exciting to bring musicians from different orientations together, to find pieces of music that really moved us, whether they were contemporaneous to the time, or later, but — as Ken likes to say — worked,' said Botstein, whose father is the conductor Leon Botstein.
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Burns singled out Giddens's 'ferocious determination to expand the canon of American music,' saying that her performances in the film would 'tear the hair off your head.'
'Sarah and I won't work on a more important film,' Burns said. 'We're not saying that this is the
most
important film, but we won't work on a more important film.' The two of them have felt a sense of 'humbling importance,' he said, which 'required us to spend the nearly-decade doing it, and trying to get it right.'
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at