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Sat. Feb. 27 The Alloy Orchestra - three guys with a of music making equipment (junk percussion to keyboards) - have carved out a very creative, and rewarding life. Arguably, they're the best band to create and play their own soundtracks to old silent films. May sound like a niche market, but it's a growing niche market and the marriage of live music and film can be transportive. There's scads of critics who've raved about 'em - us included - but proba bly their best blurb comes from the esteemed Chicago Sun Times critic Robert Ebert who wrote, "I was fascinated by the power of silent film to draw me into a reverie state so deep it is like a waking dream." (He saw the Alloys perform to "The Last Command.")
The Boston-based group is back Saturday Feb. 27 at the Somerville Theatre with the 1928 Russian Constructivist film, "Man With a Movie Camera." Keyboardist Roger Miller says, "This film is the grand-daddy of all avant-garde film, yet is easily enjoyed. An astounding film. Miller - you also know him as Mission of Burma's guitarist - handles the keyboards. Terry Donahue and Ken Winokur are on junk percussion. Winokur e-mailed us his take on "Man with a Movie Camera." It is, he wrote, "one of the most remarkable and influential films of the silent era. You can talk about how this movie about a movie is the first post-modern film. You can look at all the amazing camera and editing techniques that he popularized. But what's really hard to describe is how this (especially with Alloy's score) makes the film the most fast paced and exhilarating film experience an audience is likely to ever have. Alloy wrote this score 15 years ago with our original keyboard player, Caleb Sampson for a performance at the Telluride Film Festival. (Sampson committed suicide in 1998. For a very moving tribute to him, check out my bud Gerald Peary's essay at http://geraldpeary.com/essays/stuv/sampson.html.)
Winokur: "Tellurides guest director Paolo Cherchi Usai along with Soviet film expert Yuri Tsivian, brought a newly discovered document which had the director, Dziga Vertov's notes on how he wanted the score composed. These notes hadn't been seen or used since the films premiere in 1928. Alloy composed their new score referencing these notes, and performed the film widely for several years. The print became too difficult to obtain, so it was dropped from our current repertoire. Recently, Alla Kovgan (the artist director for St. Petersburg Russia's Kinodance film festival, and a Boston resident) helped Alloy acquire a gorgeous new print of the film from Russia's Gosfilmofond (the national film archive). Alloy's current keyboard player, Roger Miller, learned Sampson's part of the score, and we began performing it.
Created in 1928 in the Soviet Union, the film was immediately banned. Stalin felt that it didn't sufficiently glorify the revolution, and was too "formalist." The film has rarely been performed in Russia and is largely unknown. Alloy was invited to perform our score with the new print at the Kinodance festival. We performed to a packed audience who, at the end of the show, leapt to their feet and gave the group a thunderous round of applause. It was an unusually gratifying performance, bringing this masterpiece back to it's rightful home and introducing it to the grandchildren of the people depicted in the film." Check out the group at www.alloyorchestra.blip.tv. Tickets for the 8 p.m. Somerville show are $21. 55 Davis Square, Somerville, 617-625-5600
www.somervilletheatreonline.com |
