•
Rating: 5 QUESTIONS TO: bluEsforCE
ABOUT: silent film and live music... simultaneously!
Lately, I've had the fortune of attending some shows featuring live scoring of classic silent films. For such a "difficult" term, there's a very simple explanation: while a silent film is projected, a group of musicians plays a live soundtrack. Just like in the '10s and '20s. With some differences: musical choices have multiplied a hundredfold in the last 80/90 years, and we've lost that magical dimension which is attending an event that's halfway between a unique occurrence and a reproducible work. We take the synchronized sound source for granted and no longer pay much attention to what we hear as the film unfolds before our eyes. How many of us wonder what a film would be like with different music, or with music that's always different each time we watch it?
Attending a screening of a silent film with live rescore made me think a lot about some media-related, semiotic, and cultural issues regarding the potential cross-contamination between images and improvised music, and to clear up some doubts about the new musical possibilities for recovering early-century film, I interviewed by email Cristiano Callegari, known as "ZioBurp", the keyboardist of bluEsforCE, a jazz/blues/electronic/noise/lounge/new wave/psychedelic/whoever has more can put it in ensemble which recently, at SpazioMusica in Pavia as part of the "Cinestesia" series, took on the task of improvising a live soundtrack to some classics like "Metropolis" by Fritz Lang, "The Phantom of the Opera" by Rupert Julian, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" by Wiene, and "Der Golem" by Wegener. Since the subject is vast and stimulating, I hope no one takes offense if the usual five questions have become eight.
Dune Buggy: How does the creative phase for the films' soundtrack unfold?
Zio Burp: Very informally. We watch the film all together. Usually, at least one (often the director, William) has already seen it and gives some directions.
The others listen, while eating and drinking and commenting. All this happens the same evening before the film, with advantages (we've just seen it) and disadvantages (maintaining attention on the same film twice on the same evening, first holding a fork and then an instrument)
DB: Why did you choose the masterpieces of German expressionism?
ZB: You'd have to ask Vincenzo, who recommends the films to us. We have to choose only very old stuff to avoid paying the copyright. Otherwise, it would be nice to work even on documentaries. Or on soundtracks so well-known that the audio can be removed, I'm thinking of King Kong.
DB: Do you remain formally tied to the film, or when you think about the music, do you start from the emotions the movie triggers in you?
ZB: Even though there's a lot of cohesion, musically and otherwise, it's difficult to give many directions and scripts orally and without rehearsals. However, we tend to follow the storyline closely, including the emotions.
DB: What value might the revival of silent cinema have today, seen through this lens of musical reinterpretation?
ZB: For us, it is a continuous improvisation workshop. For cinema that's 80-90 years old, it's a chance to be relived, renewed by sounds and musical styles that didn't even exist back then. And to enjoy jazz-derived improvisation where even for the same film, the music is and will never be the same. And the work on soundtracks at that time was raw and youthful.
DB: What are your musical influences, and which particularly flow into your improvisation?
ZB: What happened is we all found ourselves wanting to move in this direction. And all together, for the pleasure of doing it. For me and Pilo (drums) I say jazz (especially free jazz) and Zappa's lesson.
Paolo (guitar) comes from blues and rock but is even more of a Zappa fan than I am, and he can play anything.
Lisi (bass) comes from new wave and psychedelia. William (electro) knows and listens to everything. The idea was his, and the balance we've achieved is due also and especially to his directions in terms of dynamics and volume. "Play less, guys, damn," was his constant refrain for the first performances.
Anyway, it's like that. When you're doing something you enjoy, it's easy to get carried away and overindulge. Instead, you have to be careful. Also because for the audience, the music we make (almost always atonal, noisy, crooked) is already challenging, and if there's no logical thread of balance holding it together, it becomes chaos. Where we can grow is here. In the silences, in the dynamics, and also in the search for a minimum of tunefulness, which so far we haven't cultivated.
DB: How do you deal with synchronization with the film and the narrative rhythm during improvisation?
ZB: We learn ways to enter the film each time. At first, we tended to be more didactic and stick to the rhythm. Now, if there's an action scene, we might play it slow and very stretched out, for contrast. But these are things we decide each time before the set. And which perhaps we then deny on stage because something starts that we like to follow. Obviously, the faster the editing and more it alternates different scenes, the crazier it is to fit them all into one single music since it's often impossible to change the mood every few seconds.
DB: Did you choose improvisation because it's a practice of your musical background or because of its intrinsic value in the spontaneity of the suggestions offered by the film?
ZB: Because we like it. Because it's a challenge. Because we're good at it (even if initially we didn't know, I'm saying as a band, that we would find this balance). Since we can't rehearse, for now, it's the only way. If the project grows, it might be a good idea to introduce something written and structured. But the share of improvisation must still be significant, I'd say.
DB: Anything that comes to mind about your work (including audience reception etc.) and live scoring in general, write it down!
ZB: I like that we don't see the audience, and they don't see us. Often we have no idea how many are there. When I arrive exhausted (because anyway it's tiring to play-listen-watch) at the end of an almost two-hour film, and The end hits and there's a solid two-minute applause from 50 people who've been there, I feel it's worth it and that we deserve it.
What to say? The discussion certainly can't end here, but the answers from Cristiano, whom I thank for his availability and kindness, help us better understand how this practice works and why it's important for all fans of cinema and music to be spectators of events of this kind. It's not every night you get to return to the '20s and at the same time be projected into the future of artistic contamination... I believe this is enough to invite you to come to SpazioMusica in Pavia on the evening of June 5th for the last rescore by bluEsforCE, which will include some shorts by Méliès revisited, or rather re-heard in light of their strange mix of electronics, jazz, noise, blues, and lounge psychedelia.
WEB REFERENCES
bluEsForCE
bluEsForCE myspace
SpazioMusica
Cinestesia
ZioBurp
ZioBurp Myspace
Dune Buggy aka Feel-Glass
Loading comments slowly
