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About the film:
The film, shot in 1921 and released in 1922, was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel (for instance, "vampire" became "Nosferatu" and "Count Dracula" became "Count Orlok"). Stoker's heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. However, a few prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema. The screening will be accompanied by a live score composed and conducted by Roger Landes and Chris Smith, both TTU School of Music and Vernacular Music Center. The production will feature the traditional music of the TTU Balkan Ensemble and the “Symphonic folk” of the Elegant Savages Orchestra, performing live and costumed on a steampunk theme.
About the music:
When given the opportunity in October 2015 to collaborate with the Flatlands Film Festival by director Robert Peaslee, TTU Vernacular Music Center director Christopher Smith bounced the idea by Roger Landes, who directs the VMC’s Balkan Music Ensemble. A lifelong film buff, Landes immediately suggested that he and Smith create a new score for the German classic silent film Nosferatu to be performed live by Smith’s Elegant Savages Orchestra (which includes many Balkan ensemble members). The score’s themes were newly composed by Smith and Landes, and orchestrated by Smith, who will conduct. In approaching the writing of the themes for the score, both composers kept in mind the juxtaposition of cultures represented in the film, which maintains the tension between Western Europe and Eastern Europe established by Stoker’s novel. As an alternative to the original score, which is very late Romantic and exclusively Western, they strove to integrate aspects of Balkan traditional as well as Western European music. The performance was so well-received that the composers and the ensembles have been invited to return Friday April 8, for one night only.
About the film, music, and images together:
The original scores features the combined forces of the TTU Balkan Ensemble, led by Landes, and the Elegant Savages Orchestra, led by Smith, a chamber orchestra playing “symphonic folk” versions of traditional and original music. The ESO has been prominently featured in collaborations with TTU Dance productions, and Landes, Smith, and some of the musicians have previously collaborated with TTU Theatre’s productions of Twelfth Night (2014) and Mother Courage and Her Children (2015)—the latter music winning a Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival “meritorious achievement” Award.
A further layer of brilliant collaboration comes from School of Art faculty member Ghislaine Fremaux, assistant professor of art, who has supplied original artwork, filtered through her own sensibility, which “riffs upon” the classic imagery associated with Murnau’s film. Her original work is prominently featured as part of the performance’s program and visual experience.
The Landes/Smith Nosferatu score employs orchestral techniques as experimental and avant-garde, in their way, as did Murnau’s film. As the film plays, the Orchestra engages in a series of conducted improvisations led by Smith, responding in real time to cues and pre-written music, and counterbalanced with a series of traditional and improvisational performances from Landes and his Balkan players. The result, like a jazz performance, is a unique suite of interlocking compositions, juxtaposing and contrasting both ensembles, in a wide range of moods ranging from lyric to horrific.
Don’t miss this once-ever performance!
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Posted:
10/14/2016
Originator:
Daniel Tyler
Email:
N/A
Department:
Museum
Event Information
Time: 7:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Event Date: 10/15/2016
Location:
Museum of Texas Tech University
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