Classic Silent Films and Hot Club Jazz at the Redfern Arts Center
KEENE, N.H., 3/8/09 - Imagine early 1920s Paris - a small, intimate theatre plays host to new and avant-garde cinema - specifically, the silent surrealist films of the day. Now, fast-forward 80 years to Keene State College’s Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond, Tuesday, March 28, 7:30 p.m., when the Hot Club of San Francisco will bring Silent Surrealism to the Monadnock Region. Silent Surrealism continues this early French tradition when the Hot Club takes us back in time with an evening of four short, silent, surrealist films shown to live gypsy jazz.
The Hot Club of San Francisco is America’s leading musical ensemble celebrating the music of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli’s pioneering Hot Club de France. The ensemble borrows the all-string instrumentation of violin, bass and guitars from the original Hot Club, but breathes new life into the music with innovative arrangements of classic tunes. Hearing the ensemble carries an audience back to the 1920s and to the small, smoky jazz clubs of Paris or the refined lounges of the famous Hotel Ritz. Often called gypsy jazz, the music of the Hot Club has entranced audiences around the globe for over 10 years. The Hot Club keeps this historic music fresh and alive.
The evening’s program of music will be announced from the stage, but the repertoire will be drawn from such songs as “All of Me,” “Dark Eyes,” “Douce Ambiance,” “I Surrender, Dear,” “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” “Melodie au Crepscule,” “Nuages,” “Place de Broukere,” “Oriental Shuffle,” “Minor Swing,” “Troubled Bolero,” “Song of India,” “Djangology,” and “R-26,” among others.
For an historical perspective of this music, the audience is invited to a pre- performance talk on the history of gypsy jazz by KSC faculty artist Don Baldini, who once led a Hot Club
Band. The talk will begin at 6:30 p.m. on March 28 in Room 125 of the Arts Center, located on the ground floor. Directions will be posted.
The four films to be seen are Charlie Bower’s It’s a Bird and Now You Tell One, James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber’s The Fall of the House of Usher, and Harold Shaw’s The Land beyond the Sunset. Bowers directed, wrote and starred in his own original films, yet he was and still is extremely obscure. Though he was an American, all but one of his films were found in Europe Many turned up in the hands of some gypsies in Europe and Eastern Europe, who used to go from town to town showing films.
Usher is based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe about Roderick Usher and his sickly twin sister Madeline. It was written and produced by Watson and Webber in a barn behind Watson’s home in Rochester, N.Y. It is noted for its sophisticated camera effects and superimpositions that were far ahead of their time. Film Archives describes Land Beyond as “an unhurried story through diverse genres: from a social problem drama through a pastoral fantasy and into an unclassifiable poetic finale.”
The audience is invited for a post-performance discussion about the films facilitated by KSC film professor Larry Benaquist in the Arts Center’s Harry Davis Room. Light refreshments will be served.
Tickets for the performance are available through the Brickyard Pond box office, 603-358-2168, at $17 for the general public, $14 for seniors and KSC faculty and staff, $9 for youth 17 and younger, and $5 for KSC students with ID.
