Which JS framework with PHP backend

I am starting a new web project and I would like to have some advices about the most common architectures according to the recent standard.

My firt idea is to base my development on a RESTfull application, with a PHP backend. I'm really interested about using the phalcon framework, because of it's performance (comparable to nodeJs the core written in C).

Today in my work i am using AngularJs for front end and i have seen bad things about the dirty checking and the watchers, that's alos why i wanted to check other king of framework.

However when i look emberJs, AngularJs2 or even React i don't really see how these frameworks can interact with a PHP framework. I mean, if you look the starter tutorial for ember, we need to start a nodeJs server to make it work. Does it mean that every new JS framework are only designed to work with JS backend ?