|
Sat. Feb. 4 “I think you can imagine why we're calling this show ‘Wild and Weird,” says Alloy Orchestra musical director and junk percussionist Ken Winokur. “There are some crazy films here.” Alloy Orchestra – the Boston trio consisting of Winokur, fellow junk percussionist Terry Donahue and Mission of Burma’s Roger Miller on keyboards – has been setting new music to old silent movies for two decades. “We feel we revitalized these movies with our modestly modern music, that it’s no longer this dusty old experience; it’s exciting and fun,” says Winokur. It’s something he readily admits they “stumbled into,” when then-Coolidge Corner Theatre programmer David Kleiler suggested it. At the Somerville Theatre, Saturday Feb. 4, they’re playing music set to ten films, among them “The Acrobatic Fly,” “Artheme Swallows His Clarinet” and “Filmstudie.” “Over the last 20 years that we've been doing Alloy, I've watched every silent film I can get my hands on,” Winokur says, “searching for the perfect vehicles for Alloy's scores. I kept stumbling on shorts that were really odd, films that didn't feel like the typical melodramas or slapstick comedies. They were films that really appealed to me for their wild creativity - films that really pushed the boundaries of film conventions. And, interestingly, many of the films are quite early in the history of filmmaking.” “Since the films are wildly different from one another Alloy's music is also really varied. ‘The Acrobatic Fly” is a bizarre film of a fly that has been glued to a table upside down and spins miniature dumbbells or a ball like a circus performer. It has a totally improvised mostly percussive soundtrack that sounds a lot like the music of the groundbreaking percussion composer Edgar Varese. “Artheme Swallows His Clarinet’ is about guy who wanders around trying to remove a clarinet that has been rammed through his skull. It relies on the sounds of a squawking clarinet to illustrate the poor guy's difficult predicament, and some sweet clarinet melodies. “Filmstudie,’ by Dada artist Hans Richter, has Terry and Roger doing a spacey improv while I recite DADA poetry by Richter's college, Hugo Ball.”  “The other films,” adds Winokur, “are more scripted and have music that reflects Alloy's typical styles - sometimes humorous, sometimes overly dramatic and usually filled with percussion and off-kilter melodies.” The Alloys star has been on the ascent for years – they’ve composed scores for 22 full-length films and a myriad of shorts – but Winokur says they got a real boost in 2010, when Turner Classic Movies invited them to contribute an updated score for ‘Metropolis’ (Alloys first film) at the US premiere of the magnificent restoration of the classic sci-fi film, which took place in Los Angeles’ movie palace Grauman's Chinese Theater. “It was a big bump of name recognition,” Winokur says. “Since, we have been touring around the country playing almost nonstop. I’m actually trying to cut it back. We worked ourselves to death last year. We’ve been offered more gigs than we can do.” Of course, there’s a buzz about silent these days, with Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” which concerns the work of silent pioneer Georges Melies. And there’s the similarly acclaimed “The Artist.” “What is going on?,” asks Winokur with a laugh. “’Hugo’ raised the history of silent film and ‘The Artist’ has made people realize you can watch a black-and-white film without dialogue and it can be really fun. It’s the greatest advertising for us. “We've had the last month off to recharge our batteries and are ready to wow our faithful hometown audience.” Note: “Wild and Weird” came out on DVD this summer, on the Flicker Alley video label. This program is somewhat shorter than the DVD, about an hour.
Tickets: $25. Starts at 8.
55 Davis Square, Somerville, 617-876-4275 www.worldmusic.org |
