“They’re astonishing, @#!*@ brilliant. The best jam band I’ve ever seen. I want to make a record with them.”—Elton John

Mark Meatto’s film incisively captures the sights and sounds of a musician, band and genre in sometimes uneasy transition. The musician is bluegrass wunderkind Chris Thile, a man whose meteoric journey from child mandolin prodigy to "a once-in-a-century musician" (per T Bone Burnett) has given off an air of strong but wary ambition that recalls Robbie Robertson in Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, and it’s his elusive personality that dominates the proceedings.

Previous to the film’s action Thile has broken up his platinum-selling group Nickel Creek at the height of their success, divorced and re-emerged with a new band, Punch Brothers. It features Gabe Witcher on fiddle, Chris Eldridge on acoustic guitar, Noam Pikelny on banjo and Greg Garrison/Paul Kowert on double bass. Thile has written for them an ambitious new piece of music, a four-movement genre-exploding suite called The Blind Leaving the Blind. The intricate balance of musical power and personal integrity between Thile and his bandmates is well caught; each, a virtuoso in his own right, must decide how subservient to Thile’s vision they ought to be. They and the film ask how much of performing is about pushing the envelope and how much (in a shrinking industry) is it about giving the people what they want, with a nice merch table… With John Paul Jones, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Gerry Douglas and Sara Watkins. (See the film and then catch Punch Brothers at the Chan Centre on Nov. 24!)