Despite a revival of interest in recent
years, the phrase "silent movie" still conjures for
many 21st century folk a moth-eaten image. The Alloy Orchestra
is doing their best to change that.
The three-man ensemble has earned international acclaim composing
and performing musical scores for classic silents, opening the
eyes and, paradoxically, the ears of modern audiences: "They
realize that they’re not just these dusty old archive pieces,"
says orchestra member Terry Donahue. "They’re actually beautiful
pieces of art that stand the test of time."
This Thursday, July 19, Donahue, Ken Winokur and Roger C. Miller
will make their annual visit to the Celebrate Brooklyn festival
in Prospect Park – this time to play their original score to
Fritz Lang’s futuristic classic "Metropolis."
"We look forward to it every year," says Donahue. "It’s
outside, and the atmosphere is so laid back and relaxed [with]
a very excited and friendly audience. The whole drive-in feel
that you get from it makes it really great."
With them come the usual synthesizers, drums and, well, "a
bedpan, a couple varied pieces of sheet metal, a set of horseshoes,
a couple of truck springs, some pots and pans, hubcaps and cow
bells and ratchets, air conditioning ducts and now I play the
musical saw. People are generally surprised when playing junk
can actually sound like beautiful music."
Adds Winokur, "We have a whole storage room filled with
stuff and we’re always dipping into it. It’s not a totally original
idea. There have been people doing this since – well, I don’t
know, people like to say that the first instrument was probably
somebody beating on a hollow log. It’s kind of a logical way
of pursuing music."
Brooklynites will glimpse Alloy’s beginnings as the band provides
the live musical accompaniment to their signature movie, "Metropolis,"
the hugely influential 1926 science fiction epic from Germany.
In 1991, the Boston-based group was already established in the
area music scene (with original keyboard player Caleb Sampson,
who died three years ago and was succeeded by Miller). A local
film and music booker was planning to screen the 1984 restoration
of "Metropolis" – then the most complete version available
– but he was less than enthusiastic about its soundtrack of contemporary
Top 40 acts.
"It clicked in his brain that we would be a logical accompaniment
to the film, both visually and thematically," Winokur recalls.
"He asked us fairly casually to throw together a score.
We just as casually said, ’Sure, why not? We’ll do anything once,’"
Winokur said with a chuckle. "They invited us back again
and again and again. And we began to realize that this was a
really wonderfully rich field that wasn’t being exploited."
Alloy has since scored about 15 other feature films and roughly
that many shorts, performing around the world, both live and
in the recording studio for video releases. But their first movie
is their mainstay – Winokur estimates that they’ve accompanied
"Metropolis" roughly 400 times (with names like Pat
Benatar and Adam Ant still lingering in the closing credits to
puzzle audiences).
Alloy’s music – a blend of the metallic and melodic, the handcrafted
and the state of the art – echoes Lang’s vision of a futuristic
mega-city where mechanized, dehumanized tyranny clashes with
simple human compassion.
However well matched Alloy seems with a film, achieving that
synergy between image and score is a painstaking process. Composing
starts with scene-by-scene improvisations in front of a video
playback of the film. Once the music emerges, extensive rehearsals
are necessary to sync the group to the onscreen action.
"For the most part we spend an entire summer working on
a new film and then premiere it in September," explains
Winokur.
This process will soon be applied to "Speedy," a now
little-noted 1928 feature by bespectacled comic superstar Harold
Lloyd. Winokur observes that it seems to have been "made
with the Alloy Orchestra in mind. It’s got all these wonderful,
fast-paced chase scenes and these great fight gags." Thanksgiving
weekend will find them at a favorite venue, the Film Society
of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, performing live for
the first time with Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton comedy shorts
they originally accompanied for video.
For all this, their biggest coup in the near future may be to
revisit "Metropolis" once again. "They located
the original English-language print in Australia in a film archive,"
says Winokur. "It’s got all the original titles and it’s
a very intact print relative to the previous one that has been
pieced together from lots of different sources. It follows so
much more easily. It’s really engrossing and the English titles
are so much more elucidating of what’s really going on in the
film. So we decided it was worth the effort to go back and take
our score and rework it so that it fits the new cut."
Everything old is new again. It could be the Alloy Orchestra’s
motto.
Fritz Lang’s "Metropolis"
with live musical accompaniment by the Alloy Orchestra will be
screened July 19 at 7:30 pm in the Prospect Park Bandshell [Ninth
Street at Prospect Park West in Park Slope, (718) 855-7882, ext.
45]. Suggested donation, $3. For a complete schedule of Celebrate
Brooklyn events go to www.celebratebrooklyn.org.
