The most famous image from Edison’s 1910 film version of ‘Frankenstein,’ for which New Music Works’ Phil Collins has composed a new score.
New Music Works’ impish composer-conductor Phil Collins has more than the usual tricks and treats up his sleeve this month. They will be revealed—visually and sonically— at the Rio Theater on Saturday October 26, at an enormous indoor Halloween block party guaranteed to get you on your feet and boogying to Stravinsky. No, really.
Fans who recall Collins' infectious original score for Fritz Lang's silent classic Metropolis will be happy—very happy—about what's in store for the HalloweenWorld: Come as You Aren't! multi-media event. It’ll feature a rare screening of the 12-minute 1910 Frankenstein silent film by Thomas Edison, accompanied by a world premiere score by Collins; music ranging from Charles Ives to John Zorn; a costume contest; line dancing to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring; and more.
His 2003 soundtrack for Nosferatu led to what Collins considers “the best thing I've ever done,” his score for Lang's Metropolis.
“Edison made over 90 films,” Collins pointed out over coffee at Lulu's Octagon. “They were all around 15 minutes long. But this one is unusual. It is film in its truly embryonic stage.”
The technologically rustic miniature—missing three of its original 15 minutes—proved to be a unique challenge. Unlike Collins' celebrated score for Lang's almost two-hour dystopic spectacle, with its malevolent industrial machinery and looming skyscrapers, Frankenstein required a more intimate musical palate. Originally, Collins started composing for a 10-11 piece ensemble, but eventually he “scaled back the instrumentation, so that Edison can be the dominant feature.”
“In scoring Metropolis, the primary musical objective was to generate orchestral heft and to evoke larger-than-life soundscapes that corresponded with the epic themes and scale of the film. Edison’s synoptic telling of Frankenstein called for quite the opposite,” he says. “This film's got wonderfully strange chemistry. Gothic horror, slapstick, and maudlin drama—the film does leap into the phantasmagoric.”
At the time that Edison's Frankenstein was released, at least two scores were already in circulation and being performed by the go-to silent film instrument, the Wurlitzer organ. “They combined bits of opera, musical clichés, popular tunes, into a seamless score,” he says. Collins has enfolded three distinct musical quotations from those vintage scores into his new setting for the film, creatively recycling moments of a hundred-year-old legacy.
Creating Life
“When I begin, I have keyboard and start improvising.” Collins explains. “I always make a detailed timeline, second by second, of the film and use that as constant reference. Then I watch the film over and over—so many times that I enter into it and get into its bloodstream. “
He then makes a complete score, without editing, “trying to be as receptive as possible.” Then he gradually scales back the orchestra he will use, in this case rewriting the score four times, “trying to find the right sound, so that the score wouldn't overshadow the film.” Collins is committed to maintaining collaborative simpatico with the film's creator. “Through viewing a film repeatedly, I try to recognize the director’s underlying rhythms, so as to make sure that my accompaniments support the way the film breathes. Sometimes a simple atmospheric touch—an occasional note or chord—will complement the director’s intentions better than ongoing music,” he reveals.
“I'm trying to bring a scrappy sense of surprise to the music, ” says the composer, a big fan of New York multi-musicologist John Zorn. “He is the musical force of our time.”
Like Zorn, Collins' work sparkles with eclectic postmodernism, sounding at times like a mash-up of klezmer, Kurt Weil and Stravinsky. “Making this kind of music,” Collins confesses,” takes confidence and chops. It starts living inside you—you just have to get past your ego—and then it keeps on being pure discovery.”
Monster Mash
With its sensuous and witty new soundscapes, its reality show activities and crowd participation, the upcoming HalloweenWorld party promises to be nothing short of “controlled spontaneity,” Collins predicts. Kids will be invited to get involved via life-sized Halloween paintings and global skyping from haunted houses around the world. “It's going to be a big Halloween party, with lots of visuals, scary costumes and little film tasties.”
We can expect choice revisiting and revising of past New Music Works greatest hits, with loads of quickie new music soundbytes performed by Amanda Mendon, the uncanny Ariose Singers and Noise Clinic. In addition to Collins' score for Frankenstein, the NMW Ensemble and Chorus will perform Yoshiwara, a dashing excerpt from Collins' Metropolis score. Silent film freaks will thrill to a screening of Winsor McCay's 1916 animated short, How a Mosquito Operates, with music by Katrina Wreede. The evening will wrap up on an adventurous note of cutting-edge new music with a West Coast Premiere of John Zorn's All Hallow's Eve.
Maestro Collins is convinced that Halloween and New Music Works fit together tighter than Miley Cyrus' tank top. “Horror and the scary—new music has been the servant of that from the beginning,” he contends. “New music is music of the future, the fantastic.”
New Music Works’ ‘Come as You Aren’t' party will be held Sat Oct 26, 7pm, at the Rio Theater in Santa Cruz.
