Deep pride
When a marketing programme really kicks off and you see results, it is very gratifying. Sergio Lopez Figueroa’s music composing for silent movies is beginning to happen.
His Tate Modern event was a good success…. about 3/4 full but totally sold out. Some of the complimentary tickets given out weren’t used which was a shame.
But the Guardian and the BBC Mundo wrote about it.
And making live music to film is often the last bastion of the unlistenable.
Yet for most of the concert, Spanish composer Sergio Lopez Figueroa pulled it off - creating a coherent response to short films not prized for their coherence.
Figueroa’s best work is in his score for Un Chien Andalou,
a rich and dramatic response to this notoriously opaque (and
intermittently shocking) sequence of dream-like scenarios. By making
his music flow both with and against the film (featuring more of the
outstanding Maya Sapone), Figueroa has created a provocative new work.Events like this are ultimately worth going to because they create
"cinema" out of a bunch of old films. Sure, you can now get restored
DVDs of some of the best-known work in the avant-garde canon (which is
fine for private study), and you can YouTube many of these clips, too.
But sitting at home, watching scratchy black-and-white shorts on your
PC or telly doesn’t always make for much of an experience.Programming these films with live music denotes a degree of
commitment that the audience can immediately appreciate. It’s an event,
turning these celluloid moments into something that’s still on the edge….. John Walters
And he’s been invited to do similar things in New York and Sydney…