Our winter series of silent film and soundtracking is rolling on with Nosferatu next month!!  We are back in the newly renovated Hollywood Theatre with ultra-comfy seats and a slick paint job.   Strangled Darlings have put together an awesome piece this month for the original vampire feature.   It’s a visually brilliant film if you haven’t seen it.   Come sink into the new seats with a wine or beer and check out Organ Grinder’s February offering!

On February 18th, The Strangled Darlings creep from the crypt and into the Hollywood Theatre. The tome, Nosferatu, FW Murnau’s 1922 tale of purity of heart, vampires, and blood. The Strangled Darlings present a disconcerting mix of styles. They paint an eerily dark portrait that seems like it was made for the classic horror genre. In a special one-time performance, the Hollywood Theatre is transformed back to its vaudeville days of bowler hat bedecked musicians and big screen spectacles.

Organ Grinders: NOSFERATU
February 18th – 8pm
Hollywood Theatre – $12
Tickets available at Filmusik.com and the Hollywood Theatre box office

The Darlings came from outer space upon the Devil’s ship. God was making cookies, peanut butter chocolate chip. He forgot his new creation, as gods are wont to do, and the Devil caught the Darlings & choked them white to blue. Strangled now & heartsick by their true forsaken Lord, the lost & longing Darlings are wobbled troubadours. They sings of things unspoken, to hide from good & bad they always dress immaculate in case conceptions’ had. They flitter through the country side looking for a perch & if you want to hear their tale, the Darlings are your Church.

ORGAN GRINDERS – From under the screen, the sounds of modern groups are paired with movies from a different era, updating the genre of Silent Film accompaniment to the sounds around us today. Organ Grinders revisits the original vision of the Hollywood Theatre, built in 1926 with an orchestra pit and a hydraulically ascending theatre organ.

NOSFERATU – Wisbourg, Germany based estate agent Knock dispatches his associate, Hutter, to Count Orlok’s castle in Transylvania as the Count wants to purchase a isolated house in Wisbourg. They plan on selling him the one across the way from Hutter’s own home. Hutter leaves his innocent wife, Ellen, with some friends while he is away. Hutter’s trek is an unusual one, with many locals not wanting to take him near the castle where strange events have been occurring. Once at the castle, Hutter does manage to sell the Count the house, but he also notices and feels unusual occurrences, primarily feeling like there is a dark shadow hanging over him, even in the daytime when the Count is unusually asleep. Hutter eventually sees the Count’s sleeping chamber in a crypt, and based on a book he has recently read, believes the Count is really a vampire or Nosferatu. While Hutter is trapped in the castle, the Count, hiding in a shipment of coffins, makes his way to Wisbourg, causing death along his way, which most attribute to the plague. Hutter himself tries to rush home to save his town and most importantly save Ellen from Nosferatu’s imminent arrival. In Wisbourg, Ellen can feel the impending darkness as Nosferatu gets closer. But she learns that a sinless woman can sacrifice herself to kill the vampire. Will Hutter be able to save Ellen either from Nosferatu and/or her self-sacrifice?

At the Hollywood Theatre, the Organ Grinders silent film series takes you to a dark carnival with Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford as your guides.

On December 15th, the Subterranean Howl storms the stage preaching with frequencies not meant for the instruments from which they emanate. The sermon: Tod Browning’s THE UNKNOWN, a 1927 tale of love, lies, murder, and the circus. The Subterranean Howl, taking their name from Kerouac’s “The Subterraneans” and Ginsberg’s “Howl”, indulges the listeners’ ears with dynamics ranging from the howl of a deranged street preacher to the murmur of a subterranean river.

In a special one-time performance, the Hollywood Theatre is transformed back to its vaudeville days of bowler hat bedecked musicians and big screen spectacles.

Organ Grinders: THE UNKNOWN
December 15th – 8pm >
Hollywood Theatre – $12
Tickets available at Filmusik.com and the Hollywood Theatre box office
Click Here for tickets http://bit.ly/u9t9BF

Organ Grinders’ trailer for the event: vimeo.com/32479221

If there’s one thing The Subterranean Howl has mastered, it’s dynamics. As one writer eloquently puts it, “Like the beat writers from which their name borrows, The Subterranean Howl leave style as an afterthought and spontaneously create music that is both catchy and surprisingly fresh.” It is precisely this amalgamation of sweet and tender melodies and dance inspiring grooves juxtaposed with earth-threatening sonic explosions that give the band their unique, a-pop-alyptic sound.

ORGAN GRINDERS – From under the screen, the sounds of modern groups are paired with movies from a different era, updating the genre of Silent Film accompaniment to the sounds around us today. Organ Grinders revisits the original vision of the Hollywood Theatre, built in 1926 with an orchestra pit and a hydraulically ascending theatre organ.

THE UNKNOWN – Alonzo The Armless (Lon Chaney) is a circus freak who uses his feet to toss knives and fire a rifle at his partner Nanon Zanzi (Joan Crawford). However, Alonzo is an imposter and a fugitive who keeps his arms tightly bound to his torso. Alonzo’s right hand has a double thumb, which would identify him as the perpetrator of many crimes. Alonzo is secretly in love with Nanon, who curiously has a strong fear of men’s arms. When Nanon’s father Antonio discovers Alonzo’s secret, Alonzo kills him. The harrowing tale of Alonzo’s secret and the lengths he will go to in order to protect and keep Nanon close reveals Tod Brown as a storyteller at his Shakespearean best.

1939 ENSEMBLE SCORES GERMAN SILENT MASTERPIECE WITH JOSE MEDELES OF THE BREEDERS

At the Hollywood Theatre, the Organ Grinders silent film series takes on a classic folktale in a neoclassical way. On November 18th, the 1939 Ensemble takes the stage with secret laboratory worth of drums, mallets and chimes. Their target: Goethe’s tale of the Alchemist and the Devil, the 1926 Silent film by F.W. Murnau. Led by Jose Medeles of the Breeders, the 1939 Ensemble mixes a gaggle of percussion influences into their exciting live performances. In a special one-time performance, the Hollywood Theatre is transformed back to its vaudeville days of bowler hat bedecked musicians and big screen spectacles.

ORGAN GRINDERS: FAUST
November 18th – 8pm
Hollywood Theatre – $12
Tickets available at Filmusik.com and the Hollywood Theatre box office
Click here for tickets: bit.ly/​tpKpD7

1939 are an instrumental duo from Portland Or.  with an unusual line-up: drums, vibraphone & noise. drawing influences from Jazz, Krautrock and No Wave, 1939 Ensemble moves between ominous dissonance and noise to sharp bombastic beats.  The duo features Jose Medeles of The Breeders and David Coniglio . Check out their music online at mysp.ac/vbxcaP

Jose Medeles is the drummer for The Breeders and 1939 Ensemble.  In 1998 played drums for Face to Face as a touring member. He also played drums in 22 Jacks, appearing on Overserved and their final album Going North.

David Coniglio played with Either/Orchestra and side projects with Dana Colley of Morphine.  David moved to Portland, OR in 2006, and is now actively gigging with 1939 Ensemble and M. Village.

ORGAN GRINDERS – From under the screen, the sounds of modern groups are paired with movies from a different era, updating the genre of Silent Film accompaniment to the sounds around us today. Organ Grinders revisits the original vision of the Hollywood Theatre, built in 1926 with an orchestra pit and a hydraulically ascending theatre organ.

FAUST – God and Satan war over earth; to settle things, they wager on the soul of Faust, a learned and prayerful alchemist. During a plague, Faust despairs and burns his books after failing to stop death; Satan sends Mephisto to tempt Faust, first with insight into treating the plague and then with a day’s return to youth. Mephisto is clever, timing the end of this 24 hours as Faust embraces the beautiful Duchess of Parma. Faust trades his soul for youth. Some time later, he’s bored, and demands on Easter Sunday that Mephisto take him home. Faust promptly sees and falls in love with the beautiful Gretchen, whose liaison with him brings her dishonor. Is there redemption? Who wins the wager?

INSECT INFIDELITY AND MELANCHOLIC MEDLEY

This Friday night at the Hollywood Theatre, we turn back time to a simpler age of celluloid and sound. As part of the new Organ Grinders series taking place at the Hollywood Theatre this year, Portland instrumental duo Sallo premieres an original soundtrack for some of the strangest film of the silent era:  Mest’ kinematograficheskogo operatora or The Cameraman’s Revenge. Made in 1911 by Vladislaw Starewicz, it is one of the first works of stop motion animation.  Painstakingly posing dead insects, the Russian filmmaker crafted his story of infidelity in the lives of beetles complete with a grasshopper on a moped and a projectionist diving from a flaming booth.

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE

ORGAN GRINDERS: The Cameraman’s Revenge
October 14th – 9:30pm
Hollywood Theatre – $12

Also featuring original scores for Starewicz’s short films Nightingale, Frogland and Mascot.

SALLO is a Portland based instrumental duo.  A combination of dreamy, dark, and driven instrumentals with playfully subversive song structures, Sallo’s compositions routinely test the boundaries of traditional songwriting. Sallo uses drums and keys, usually treated as mere supports in most of today’s popular music, and makes them the epicenter.  Their songs range from melancholic tremors to chaotic crescendos .  Sallo has collaborated with a variety of local artists including the Portland Cello Project, The 3rd Floor comedy/theater group, the Curious Comedy Theater and the Castiron Carousel marionette troupe.
www.sallo.bandcamp.com

kinematograficheskogo operatora: Vladislaw’s Childhood passion was entomology. Began his film career in Russia around 1909 making little shorts on insects in and around Moscow. Later educated as an entomologist, he passionately wanted to film two stag beetles fighting, but they didn’t like his camera lights and would not fight. However, the film idea led directly to his animation of insects by stop-motion photography; which in turn gave him the idea for his masterpiece “The Cameraman’s Revenge.”

ORGAN GRINDERS – From under the screen, the sounds of modern groups are paired with movies from a different era,  updating the genre of Silent Film accompaniment to the sounds around us today.  Organ Grinders revisits the original vision of the Hollywood Theatre, built in 1926 with an orchestra pit and a hydraulically ascending theatre organ.

A note for subscribers:
The new Organ Grinders series is somewhat different from our “mainstage” shows with live Foley and voice acting.  If you’d rather not receive e-mails about the Organ Grinders series in this newsletter, simply click the update profile link at the bottom of the email and select “No” under Organ Grinders.

As part of the new Organ Grinders series taking place at the Hollywood Theatre this year, Portland instrumental duo Sallo premieres an original soundtrack for some of the strangest celluloid of the silent era:  Mest’ kinematograficheskogo operatora or The Cameraman’s Revenge. Made in 1911 by Vladislaw Starewicz, it is one of the first works of stop motion animation.  Painstakingly posing dead insects, the Russian filmmaker crafted his story of infidelity in the lives of beetles complete with a grasshopper on a moped and a projectionist diving from a flaming booth.

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE and dig the fight between a dung beetle and a grasshopper

ORGAN GRINDERS: The Cameraman’s Revenge
October 14th – 9:30pm
Hollywood Theatre – $12
CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

Also featuring original scores for Starewicz’s short films Nightingale, Frogland and Mascot.

ORGAN GRINDERS – From under the screen, the sounds of modern groups are paired with movies from a different era,  updating the genre of Silent Film accompaniment to the sounds around us today.  Organ Grinders revisits the original vision of the Hollywood Theatre, built in 1926 with an orchestra pit and a hydraulically ascending theatre organ.



SALLO is a Portland based instrumental duo.  A combination of dreamy, dark, and driven instrumentals with playfully subversive song structures, Sallo’s compositions routinely test the boundaries of traditional songwriting. Sallo uses drums and keys, usually treated as mere supports in most of today’s popular music, and makes them the epicenter.  Their songs range from melancholic tremors to chaotic crescendos .  Sallo has collaborated with a variety of local artists including the Portland Cello Project, The 3rd Floor comedy/theater group, the Curious Comedy Theater and the Castiron Carousel marionette troupe.
www.sallo.bandcamp.com

A note for subscribers:
The new Organ Grinders series is somewhat different from our “mainstage” shows with live Foley and voice acting.  If you’d rather not receive e-mails about the Organ Grinders series in this newsletter, simply click the update profile link at the bottom of the email and select “No” under Organ Grinders.

Here’s the poster design for the concert just out today.  Yes the film does feature a grasshopper with a movie camera (a real one too mind you), and yes it was made in 1911.

FILMUSIK LATE NIGHT takes on 1950′s Japanese TV special with sound designer Heather Perkins

On September 9th and 10th, the Evil Brain is descending upon the Hollywood Theatre. His cobalt stalactite-fingers are menacing. His overstuffed crotch is disturbing. And his tendency to dance the cha-cha-cha during fight sequences is, well, just kind of adorable. The Evil Brain is set upon destroying the Earth, but first he’ll have to contend with Starman, the Japanese man of steel. Epic chase scenes, slapboxing matches and poorly edited teleportations abound in this pitched battle for the fate of the world.

The onscreen antics are nonstop, but at Filmusik’s adaptation of Starman vs. the Evil Brain from Space, the real action will be happening in the pit, where wunderkind sound designer and composer Heather Perkins will conjure up an electronic soundscape to redefine this classic film. Perkins has decades of experience crafting sound for projects of every stripe, and her work blurs the line between digital and analog, real and surreal, music and noise.

FILMUSIK LATE NIGHT: Starman – Attack of the Evil Brain from Outer Space
September 9th and 10th- 10pm
Hollywood Theatre – $12
More info and tickets at Filmusik.com

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS

For this special performance, Perkins is pulling out all the stops. “I will be moving a version of my entire studio into the theater,” she says, “so I am basically building a huge new instrument with many heads, each with evil brains of their own.” As the film plays behind her, Perkins will work magic on her eclectic array of gadgetry – perhaps a Vocoder for the Evil Brain sound or some keyboard blips for gunbursts, and definitely a Waterphone to get the show started. A liquid-filled brass instrument, the Waterphone produces “a sound you have heard a million times maybe without knowing what it was,” Perkins explains. “It can sound evocative if played right, but one false move and it sounds truly screechingly awful.  I’m not sure which outcome to hope for, honestly.”

HP – Once I did sound design for a pageant for the Winter Olympics, and it was huge. We had this giant bear that was going to come out on the ice, and they needed the sound of a bear catching a fish and slapping the water. That’s not in a sound library.

So here I am in my bathtub with all my microphones pointed into the tub and I’m hoping they don’t fall in. I’ve already fallen in. I’m splashing around. And that’s what ended up in the Winter Olympics pageant – me splashing around in my bathtub.

Perkins’ sonic wizardry will breathe new life into every haymaker, questionable costume choice and breathtakingly bad line of dialogue. Her expertly placed beeps and boops, whaps and thwaps might be just what Starman needs to finally defeat the Evil Brain. Don’t miss your chance to find out!

CLICK HERE TO SEE A CLIP FROM THE ORIGINAL VERSION

AN INTERVIEW WITH HEATHER PERKINS -

SOUND DESIGNER BEHIND “THE EVIL BRAIN

• Tell us about the coolest project you’ve been a part of.
Apart from the other time I’ve worked with Galen, and some great experiences working with Portland animator Rose Bond on some short films and indoor and outdoor video installations, I would have to say Electrogals, which is an electronic music festival featuring female composers that I started in 1995. It has continued to expand and grow, and it’s been really exciting for me. Producing the shows involves things that are not usually my forte, like having meetings, writing up grants and budgets, holding fundraisers, organizing other artists and writing tons of long emails. But it’s worth it. And I do get to play in the shows too, so that’s fun.

• What has been the most exciting part of putting this project together?
Well, I’m psyched to work with Galen again, and working to film is always exciting. I am trying not to allow the nerve-wracking aspect of playing a 78 minute score in real time get to me, but instead enjoy the blank canvas aspect of a project like this and the trust implicit in Galen giving me free rein. I can pretty much do anything! I will be moving a version of my entire studio into the theater, so I am basically building a huge new instrument with many heads, each with evil brains of their own. I decided to call it “The Hydra Approach.”

• The most challenging part?
Aside from moving all my stuff out of my studio and into the theater? Watching the movie. Not only is it sort of a long and comical good/bad movie which I have already watched multiple times, it’s also physically hard to watch the film while I’m playing. A lot of my gadgetry is sensitive to touch or proximity, so that requires me to pay attention to where my hands are, and it’s difficult to also see the screen. I am working on a through line sound guide that will keep me in synch, and hopefully we can get a big video monitor right in front of my face for the show!

• What sounds and experiences should audience members be most excited for?
The actual Evil Brain sound, which I am working on – possibly using a vocoder – and also the music for the fight sequences. And I will be playing the Waterphone live for the opening and closing credits, which is always exciting. It’s a sound you have heard a million times maybe without knowing what it was – I think the Waterphone is used in almost every horror film and TV show. It was featured prominently in “The X Files.” It’s an odd-looking brass instrument that contains water, and I play its tines with a violin bow – it can sound evocative if played right but one false move, and it sounds truly, screechingly awful. I’m not sure which outcome to hope for, honestly. I have a thirst for sonic danger.

As you can see from the trailer, there’s some serious shell vs. rainbow action in this film! http://vimeo.com/27668469

Filmusik: Gamera vs. Barugon
August 26th, 27th
8pm – Hollywood Theatre
Tickets $12/10 Students/seniors
PICK UP TICKETS FOR THE SHOW

Everyone’s favorite incompetent-but-persistent Hero Turtle returns to the Hollywood Theatre in the epic Japanese monster mash Gamera vs. Barugon. After a scientific expedition gone awry, a vicious beast is wreaking havoc on Japan. With its whip-crack tongue, razor-sharp horns and deadly Binaca breath, Barugon is all your childhood nightmares rolled into one badass dinorhino.

Vanquishing Barugon is a tall order, even for a Hero Turtle like Gamera. Luckily, Filmusik has his back. A crew of voice actors, musicians and foley artists provide a live soundtrack to the film, adding new life to every roar and playing up the camp in every straight-from-the-script line of dialogue. Filmusik’s original score, composed by Andrew Oliver and performed in the pit by the Ocular Concern, is guaranteed to get Gamera – and you – all pumped up for the big showdown. Don’t miss the chance to add your cheers and jeers to the soundscape in this dazzling reimagining of a classic film. Gamera can’t do it without you