Cameron Winter’s ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ Lands Ahead of PTA’s 35mm Film Run

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Partway through Cameron Winter’s solo show at Carnegie Hall last December, Paul Thomas Anderson and Benny Safdie walked out onstage with a film camera, in the middle of “Nina + Field of Cops.” Ten months later, both versions of that night are arriving. Live at Carnegie Hall, the album, came out on Friday (Oct. 9), and Anderson’s concert film starts a 35mm theatrical run on Nov. 20.

The album is already a critics’ record. Pitchfork gave it an 8.9 and Best New Music, with Walden Green calling it a work of “real-time mythmaking” in his review. The site’s weekly new-albums roundup went further, saying the 24-year-old Geese frontman cements himself “among America’s greatest living songwriters.”

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It’s just Winter and a Steinway grand: songs from his 2024 solo debut Heavy Metal pared back to piano and voice, plus new ones. The opener, “It All Fell in the River,” is one of three unreleased songs he played that night, and Green singles out another, “If You Turn Back Now,” as the record’s high point. Ariel Rechtshaid produced it, and it’s out on Partisan Records. Hear “If You Turn Back Now” below.

Cameron Winter – If You Turn Back Now (Live at Carnegie Hall)Cameron Winter · Watch on YouTube ↗

The Film

Cameron Winter at Carnegie Hall premiered at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 1. Instead of opening everywhere at once, Janus Films and Criterion are touring it on 35mm prints: it starts Nov. 20 at New York’s Village East by Angelika and BAM Rose Cinemas and at the Aero Theater in Los Angeles, then moves through cities including San Francisco, Chicago, Nashville and Boston before ending in Portland, Oregon, on Jan. 18. Mubi has it outside North America, with streaming to follow in 2027, after a U.K. premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.

It’s Anderson’s first feature since One Battle After Another won best picture, and Safdie, who co-produced, also worked as a camera operator. The film ends on “Take It With You,” with the encore, “Vines,” after the credits.

As for what Winter does next, he recently told Rolling Stone that of the few people he’s played his new solo music to, “I don’t think anyone’s really liked it.” Pitchfork, for one, isn’t buying it.