Join us for the sixth lecture in our 2025/2026 series, “Revisiting the American Revolution: Part II.”

Discover the art of film scoring with composer David Cieri as he demonstrates how music breathes life into images and documents from our nation’s past. David will also discuss writing the music for The American Revolution, a film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt which aired on PBS in November 2025.

About the speaker:
DAVID CIERI, a musician and composer, makes music for film, concert, and album release. Cieri has worked with numerous celebrated filmmakers including Ken Burns, the Ewers Brothers, and Barak Goodman. He has recorded nineteen acclaimed albums under his own name, that last ten of which were released by Ropeadope Records. He has collaborated on a major live documentary project with the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and has made two records with the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa. David wrote and performed the live scores for the first three seasons of The Paris Review podcasts. He teaches courses on Film Scoring and Music for Film at The City College of New York. Cieri recently joined forces with Yo-Yo Ma and Johnny Gandelsman to compose the score for Ken Burns’s six-part documentary The American Revolution, which airs on PBS in November 2025.