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Hey All,

Thursday August 2nd at 7:30PM The WOMR Fall and Winter Benefit Film Series returns for a special screening during the summer on Reel Film, in memory of Sally Ride, who was the first woman to go into outer space, and who just passed away from her battle with cancer.

I will be showing a super 8 Stuart Oderman scored Griggs/Essex print of Fritz Lang's "Woman In The Moon" (1929) at the WOMR Davis Space in The Schoolhouse 494 Commercial St. in Provincetown, MA. A $5 dollar suggested donation to help support community radio WOMR and WFMR. Free Popcorn will be supplied by The Provincetown Inn. Beer, Wine, and Soda will be available too.

And for anyone in Cologne, Germany on September 17th, check out the FILMHARMONIA DUO's debut performance of a newly commissioned score to the restored complete WOMAN IN THE MOON 35mm print at the pipe organ equipped Cologne Philharmonie concert hall. The new musical score provides a modern tribute to the historically authentic film scoring practice of all real-time (as opposed to pre-programmed, recorded or sequenced) performance including both compilation elements made up of period-published film music obtained from a variety of sources together with the interpolation of newly composed elements and structured improvisations.  The musical texture conception underscores the fundamental struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, frequently assigning the pipe organ in opposition to electronic synthesis.  Featured instruments besides the hall's pipe organ are two electronic instruments: the Theremin (the pioneering electronic musical instrument invented in the Soviet Union in 1919) and the Lightning (Don Buchla's wireless synthesis controller developed in the 1990's).


FILMHARMONIA

The various Filmharmonia ensembles perform authentic musical accompaniments to classic silent films. Founded by silent film music scholar Dennis James, each ensemble showcases unusual historical musical instruments within traditional, period-recreation accompaniment scorings that authentically revive the silent film era's sounds and period musical styles in performances that are both historically accurate and entertaining. Participating instrumentalists are selected for each performance from an association of professional musicians based throughout the country.  

Unusual historical instruments, showcased together with the traditional acoustic piano or pipe organ and traditional cello, include the theremin, Stroh phonoviolin, Marxophone, autoharp, flexatone, cristal d' Baschet and other various acoustic sound effects in use during the 1920's in addition to a variety of modern devices. The ensemble collaborates with film archives around the world to present exquisitely beautiful prints of some of the century's greatest films to create multi-media experiences that revive silent films' extraordinary vitality and excitement.

"Silent movies could not talk, but there was nothing they couldn't do.  The more you watch them, the more aware you become of the heady excitement the medium was able to inspire.  Most of today's movies are made for the purpose of attracting audiences; many silent classics were made in the conviction they could inspire and even transform audiences."

The first Filmharmonia ensemble was formed in 1990 for THE AELITA PROJECT, the recreation of the original film music for the Soviet futurist-fantasy silent film Aelita, Queen of Mars. The score incorporates both surviving original score fragments and period Soviet generic silent film music publications. The Aelita Project was designed especially to include use of the pioneering 1920 Soviet musical instrument invention, the theremin, in tribute to its most famous later role as a sound effect in science-fiction film music scoring.

FILMHARMONIA's “Man With a Movie Camera “ at the University of Chicago: " .  . one of the must-see events of the Chicago movie year" - Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times 

Quickly expanding their range of unusual instruments and historic generic source music, Filmharmonia accepted a commission in early 1996 for a new score to the Soviet comedy The House on Trubnaya Square in celebration of U. C. Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive 25th anniversary. The critical acclaim for that score has led to various commissions, including an accurate realization of director Dziga Vertov's own musical scoring notes for his The Man with a Movie Camera, (premiered at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive in 1996) plus organ & electronics duo scores for the newly restored Metropolis (premiered at the San Francisco Int'l Film Festival).

Filmharmonia’s stylistic loyalty to the original filmmakers' visions at first seems as anachronistic as the reality of a performing musical ensemble providing a live soundtrack for modern-day audiences, especially one that supports the film rather than overpowering it, so typical in this modern Digital Sound reproduction era.  Filmharmonia bridges the worlds of film appreciation, musical imagination and historical preservation to craft works of art, timeless creations that transcends any era.
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FILMHARMONIA
Tour Performance Sites

Louvre Museum, Paris, France
National Film Theatre, London, England
Palazzo Delle Espisozioni, Rome, Italy
Konzerthaus, Venna, Austria
Grosser Salle, Mozarteum, Salzburg, Austria
Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore
McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Uptown Theatre, Calgary, Canada
Museum of Modern Art, New York City
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California
Copley Symphony Hall, San Diego, California
Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, California
Castro Theatre, San Francisco, California
Stanford Theatre, Palo Alto, California
Cinequest International Film Festival/ California Theatre, San Jose, California
Telluride Film Festival, Colorado
Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington
Paramount Theatre, Seattle, Washington
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Rockefeller Chapel, University of Chicago, Illinois
Max Palevsky Cinema, University of Chicago, Illinois
Madison Civic Center, Madison, Wisconsin
Wexner Center for the Contemporary Arts, Columbus, Ohio
Cleveland Art Museum, Cleveland, Ohio
High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia
Festival of World Cinema, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania