The International Novelty Gamelan band and the modern dance duo Hijack to open.
Pyrrha will perform their original score for Jean Epstein's 1928 silent film The Fall of the House of Usher. Based on Edgar Allen Poe's gothic horror story of the same name, the film seeths with dreamy visual experimentation and surreal imagery. Epstein's signature approach to filmmaking is so adventurous and influential, his cinematic vision still feels fresh almost 90 years later. In fact, as a psychological tale of confusion between reality and pictures, The Fall of the House of Usher might be the perfect camp melodrama for the age of social media.
Pyrrha is the collaboration of Minneapolis based musicians Jackie Beckey, Jonathan Kaiser, and Adam Wozniak. The trio's core instrumentation of viola, cello, and bass might suggest staid classical sounds, but these are three players with more experience in rock clubs and art galleries than traditional concert halls. Pyrrha explores a sonic spectrum from ethereal sensitivity to furious roars of amplified sound. With influences ranging from folk tunes to experimental sound, their lush score to The Fall of the House of Usher brings this silent film alive for a contemporary audience.
Pyrrha’s collaborations have coalesced around a shared interest in live music for cinema. Jonathan helped Jackie’s band Brute Heart when they were commissioned to score the classic silent filmThe Cabinet of Doctor Caligari at Walker Art Center in 2012. Since then, the two worked as a duo to compose and perform live film scores to D.W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat at a former Poor Farm in Wisconsin, and Kaiser’s film Flat Land Speed at Empire Drive-In at the New York Hall of Science. Jonathan and Adam had already toured together in the band Dark Dark Dark and worked to score Fritz Lang’s Spies at Walker Art Center in 2011. In 2015, Adam joined Pyrrha and the trio wrote an original score to the silent film The Phantom Carriage to perform at ASI and the Heights Theater. A recording of their latest collaboration, The Fall of the House of Usher will be available on LP in Spring 2017.
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