Phillip Johnston's
Transparent Quartet
The Georges Méliès Project
"The cinema? Three cheers for darkened rooms."
Now offering for in-person engagements, The Georges Méliès
Project: composer Phillip Johnston's Transparent Quartet in a
live musical accompaniment to a selection of silent films by the
early cinema director Georges Méliès (1861-1938).
Bookings are now being sought for this live contemporary music
performance with film projection. The world premiere on November 15,
1997, under the auspices of the Film Society of Lincoln Center at
New York City's Lincoln Center's (Walter Reade Theater) sold out
both shows. Subsequently, this program has been enthusiastically
received at The Wexner Center (Columbus OH), The Cleveland Museum
of Art (Cleveland OH), the World Financial Center (NYC), Teatro
Verdi (Florence, ITALY), TSL Warehouse (Hudson, NY), and others.
Called "the H.G. Wells of the jazz world" by Rolling Stone Press,
and "Potent and frolicsome, one of modern music's more versatile
writers" by Billboard, Phillip Johnston's Transparent Quartet
features the composer and leader on soprano and tenor saxophones;
Mark Josefsberg on vibraphone; Joe Ruddick on piano and baritone
saxophone; and David Hofstra on bass and tuba.
Georges Méliès, who, with the Lumière Brothers, was one of the
cinema's earliest directors, made more than 500 short films
between the years 1896 and 1912, of which fewer than 90 survive.
His films, which grew out of the ether of conjuring, automata and
magic theater of the late 19th century, unite the fantastic,
the alchemical, and the humorous. The films in The Georges Méliès
Project are early examples of sophisticated cinema techniques
(eg. stop time, cross fades, optical tricks and fantastic costumes
and backdrops), and hence are of decided historical interest,
but they also bridge the world of the 19th century conjurer with
the special effects magic of today's films. An evening-length
presentation, The Georges Méliès Project will feature prints
of recently-restored Méliès films, some of which are hand-tinted and
most of which have rarely been seen by anyone except the most avid
cinephiles, with original music inspired by the director's artistry
and designed to be performed live with the moving pictures.
The Georges Méliès Project was originally commissioned by
New York's American Museum of the Moving Image (AMMI) and has
received generous archival assistance from the George Eastman
House in Rochester, NY.
Phillip Johnston has been a composer and band-leader since the
early 1970's, composing for film, silent film, dance, theater,
radio, recordings and the concert hall.. In 1993, he was
commissioned by AMMI and funded by Meet The Composer to write
live music to accompany Tod (Freaks) Browning's silent film
The Unknown (1927), starring Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford.
Premiered to enthusiastic audiences, a complete film score was
performed live with the film by Johnston's group Big Trouble
, first at AMMI in New York, and later at The Museum of
Fine Arts Boston, the Mellon Jazz Festival, The International
Festival of World Cinema in Philadelphia, the Musica delle
Ombre Festival in Rome, and at several other venues in the US.
Johnston has recorded Big Trouble's studio version of the
music for John Zorn's Avant label. Two more commissions from the Film
Society of Lincoln Center followed: Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page of
Madness, also premiered at The Walter Reade Theater at
Lincoln Center, and F.W. Murnau's Faust which premiered at the New York
Film Festival in 2002, and has subsequently toured widely in Europe. A
film composer of note, Johnston has scored
several contemporary features, including Paul Mazursky's
Faithful, Philip Haas' The Music of Chance,
Doris Dorrie's films Geld, and Paradise, and others.
Rather than create a through-composed film score, as Johnston did
in The Unknown, The Georges Méliès Project is drawn
from a set of short films, each varying from one to 20 minutes in
length. The program is approached as a series of studies, each
with its own unique relationship between the greater elements of
music and film, examining the different structures, concepts and
magic of each film in detail. The limber
Transparent Quartet is a perfect vehicle for this
project because of its musical and timbral flexibility, and
atmospheric versatility. The music utilizes tools from the
realms of classical, jazz and experimental music.
The Georges Méliès Project, in its present form, runs
approximately 70 minutes, runs at 18fps, and comprises the
following films:
The Melomaniac (1903)
The Mermaid (1904)
The Damnation of Faust (1903)
Trip to the Moon (1902)
Hydrotherapie Fantastique
(The Doctor's Secret) (1909)
The Merry Frolics of Satan (1906)
Voyage Across the Impossible (1905)
__________________________
For more information, contact:
Phillip Johnston
phillip@phillipjohnston.com
return to front page