Well, what a night!! This was certainly a bit different!! For one night only The Marr's Bar was transformed into a miniature cinema for the showing of Nosferatu, the original 1920's vampire movie. DVD's in the 1920's?? Oh well! Seriously though, for someone who enjoys most of the performing arts, especially live music and films, this was like having all of your birthdays on one night (no thank you not when you've had as many as me!).
The story is that Umphf, in the form of Luke Wurmli (banjo, guitar, whistles, samples, and I'm sure almost anything), Corlin Broon (guitar) and Bod (keyboards) performed their original score to the remarkable vampire movie. The first shock was that here we all were on a Bank Holiday Monday with people queuing well before doors were opened. The atmosphere was a little surreal after having spent so many hours at this venue over the last twelve months or so and being used to the live music format. Instead of a mass of instruments on stage there was just a large screen. The musicians had situated themselves over to one side of the room and unless you were on that side you wouldn't even have noticed them.
So, with SRO, the performance began. My initial reaction was, "Will my brain be able to cope with the concept of listening to this modern (not background) music, whilst watching this old, sepia, silent movie?" I have to admit that for the first ten minutes or so the conflict was apparent, but once my serotonin levels had reached equilibrium, all was well.
Months of preparation had obviously gone into this in order to be able to achieve the moods, the timing and the general feeling. Moments of humour were there for the more observant of the audience as samples and programming trickery were used with precise timing.
It was quite strange, almost fascinating to look over towards the musicians, who were just visible behind the seated hoards, to occasionally see Corlin swaying as he picked, strummed and slid his way through the night.
After asking around it would seem that they have been working on this project for months but are already looking at their next venture. To the uninitiated and untalented writer this appeared to have been a mammoth undertaking - to interpret this and score it cannot have been easy - just how many times did they watch the film??
Well done Umphf for having the guts to do it and good luck with the next project! Well done Marzy for believing in it and staging it!! Oh, also well done to Rich Brace on the sound desk who somehow managed to keep things under control and didn't allow the music to swamp the visual.
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