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Silent Orchestra was formed in 1998 to bring live music and sound design to classic and contemporary silent films. They have performed their own new compositions for classic silent films at art house theaters, film festivals and art galleries since 1999. They have appeared on DVDs of classic Silent films released by Image Entertainment.
Silent Orchestra uses contemporary musical idioms to convey the art of pre-talkie films to modern audiences. The group was formed in 1998 by keyboardist, Carlos Garza and percussionist, Rich O'Meara and made their premiere in 1999. The group has performed new scores for films by F.W. Murnau, Marcel L'Herbier, Germaine Dulac, Nell Shipman and Charles Bryant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Gallery of Art. [1]
They are best known for their new score for the F.W. Murnau classic, Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922), which they have performed at the American Film Institute (AFI) Silver Theater, the Savannah Film Festival, the National Gallery of Art and the Percussive Arts Society's International Conference. Their performance of Nosferatu at the 2000 Virginia Film Festival [2] was followed by a premiere of Shadow of the Vampire, a fictionalized account of the making of Nosferatu. As festival director, Richard Herskowitz wrote in the [3] festival wrap-up, "The opening night presentation was a double feature of Nosferatu and Shadow of the Vampire, with Silent Orchestra performing its majestic score for Nosferatu. Both the night's standing ovation and the acclaim registered in audience surveys expressed great appreciation for the revelatory effect of juxtaposing the two films and adding a contemporary score." The double feature was introduced by David Shepard (film preservationist), who noted the forthcoming re-release of the Nosferatu, Special Edition DVD. As John Shea, writer for TNMC Movies noted, "We were informed by David Shepard, the archivist who restored the print, that this print along with the new soundtrack, will be released on DVD December 31, not coincidentally two days after the release of Shadow of the Vampire to theaters." [4]
Silent Orchestra employs contemporary and improvisational styles, as opposed to other groups that favor more traditional approaches. Regarding the hybrid composition/improvisation style of the duo, Carlos Garza noted in Desson Thomson's article in the Washington Post, "We enjoy the excitement of being in front of an audience, the fact that things can go wrong [with the projection]. You have to be on your toes and be able to improvise." [5]
Their Nosferatu score was first released in 2000 in Dolby Surround by Kino Video. It was then released in Dolby Digital 5.0 on the Nosferatu - Special Edition DVD by Image Entertainment in 2001. In 2003, Image Entertainment released the DVD, Salome, Lot in Sodom with a Dolby Digital 5.0 score by Silent Orchestra and a stereo score by Marc-Olivier Dupin. In 2009, Silent Orchestra released their first CD, the score for Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror.
Carlos Garza is a composer and musician with a career that includes art rock, new wave, pop, country, jazz and film composition. With his group, the young professionals, he was part of the legendary 9:30 Club scene in the early 1980s. He has also performed with Margot Chapman of the Starland Vocal Band. He has scored 15 feature films and more than 25 short films and animations. He was awarded best music in the 2009, 48 Hour Film Project for his score for "Star Pupil." [6]
Rich O'Meara is a percussionist and composer of works for marimba and ensemble that are performed throughout the world. His works for marimba, vibraphone and other percussion instruments are published by KPP and have been performed and recorded in Europe, Asia and the Americas. His marimba piece, Restless has several times been performed during encores by Evelyn Glennie and performed by her on the PBS documentary DVD, "The Music Instinct, Science & Song." He has performed with One Earth Percussion Theatre, the Contemporary Music Forum, the Lenox Ensemble, and the New York-based Sky Music. He was featured as marimba soloist with the Women Composers Orchestra and under the direction of Michel Camilo, was a guest artist at the 1998 Latin-Caribbean Festival at the John F. Kennedy Center. With the new music ensemble Amaranth, he premiered Puzzle Piece for three marimbas. In 2010, Rich O'Meara appeared at the 8th International Patagonia Percussion Festival to present a program of his works for solo and ensemble marimba.
CD, Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (2010)
DVD, Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (2001, Image Entertainment)
DVD, Salome/Lot in Sodom (2003, Image Entertainment)
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
Dracula is a 1931 American pre-Code supernatural horror film directed and co-produced by Tod Browning from a screenplay written by Garrett Fort and starring Bela Lugosi in the titular role. It is based on the 1924 stage play Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston, which in turn is adapted from the 1897 novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Lugosi portrays Count Dracula, a vampire who emigrates from Transylvania to England and preys upon the blood of living victims, including a young man's fiancée.
A percussion ensemble is a musical ensemble consisting of only percussion instruments. Although the term can be used to describe any such group, it commonly refers to groups of classically trained percussionists performing primarily classical music. In America, percussion ensembles are most commonly found at conservatories, though some professional groups, such as Nexus and So Percussion exist. Drumlines and groups who regularly meet for drum circles are two other forms of the percussion ensemble.
Toshi Ichiyanagi is a Japanese avant-garde composer and pianist. One of the leading composers in Japan during the postwar era, Ichiyanagi has worked in a range of genres, composing Western-style operas and orchestral and chamber works, as well as compositions using traditional Japanese instruments. Ichiyanagi is known for incorporating avant-garde techniques into his works, such as chance music, extended technique, and nontraditional scoring. Ichiyanagi was married to artist Yoko Ono from 1956 to 1962.
Nosferatu the Vampyre is a 1979 horror film written and directed by Werner Herzog. It is set primarily in 19th-century Wismar, Germany and Transylvania, and was conceived as a stylistic remake of F. W. Murnau's 1922 German Dracula adaptation Nosferatu. The picture stars Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula, Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker, Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker, and French artist-writer Roland Topor as Renfield. There are two different versions of the film, one in which the actors speak English, and one in which they speak German.
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Michael Blake is a South African contemporary classical music composer and performer. He studied in Johannesburg in the 1970s and was associated with conceptual art and the emergence of an indigenous experimental music aesthetic. In 1976 he embarked on 'African Journal', a series of pieces for Western instruments that drew on his studies of traditional African music and aesthetics, which continued to expand during two decades in London until he returned to South Africa in 1998. From around 2000 African music becomes less explicit on the surface of his compositions, but elements of rhythm and repetition remain as part of a more postcolonial engagement with material and form. He works in a range of styles including minimalism and collage, and now also forages for source material from the entire musical canon.
Luigi Morleo is an Italian percussionist and composer of contemporary music, who lives in Bari and teaches at the Niccolò Piccinni Conservatory.
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Jennifer Walshe is an Irish composer, vocalist and artist.
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Peter Jarvis is an American percussionist, drummer, conductor, composer, music copyist, print music editor and college professor.
The Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra is an ensemble of composers and musicians based in St. Louis, Missouri. The ensemble composes and performs original scores to accompany films of the Silent Era, and composes and records soundtrack music for contemporary films.
The Alloy Orchestra was a musical ensemble based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, that performed its own accompaniments to silent films of the classic movie era. Performing on an unusual collection of found objects, homemade instruments, accordion, clarinet, musical saw, and a sampling synthesizer, the group scored and performed with 40 feature length silent films or collections of shorts. The group is often credited with having helped revitalize the art of silent film accompaniment.
Shai Cohen is an Israeli music educator and composer of contemporary classical music.
Emmanuel Séjourné is a French composer and percussionist, and head of percussion at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg. His music is influenced by Western classical music and by popular music.
Daniel Rojas is a Chilean-born Australian pianist and composer. Rojas' work as a composer and improviser draws upon indigenous, folk, popular and classical Latin American traditions.
Tatsuo Sasaki is a timpanist, percussionist, xylophonist and marimbist. He became a naturalized American citizen and lives in San Diego, California.
Conni Ellisor is a contemporary American composer and violinist. She was trained at The Juilliard School and the University of Denver's University of Denver, Lamont School of Music, and rose to prominence as Composer-in-Residence of the Nashville Chamber Orchestra in the late 1990s. As a violinist, she has served as a member of the Denver Symphony, concertmaster of the Boulder Philharmonic, first violin in the Athena Quartet, and is now a top-call studio musician and member of the Nashville String Machine.
