FILMUSIK: DEATH RIDES A HORSE

When the lights go down at the Hollywood Theatre and the projector rolls, a 40 person chorus and chamber orchestra wait under the screen to bring a new thundering orchestral soundtrack to a classic film…

ECCE New Music Orchestra and the Opera Theatre Oregon Chorus perform an original soundtrack to the 1960’s spaghetti western classic.  The original score composed by Gracin Dorsey and Sam L. Richards, director of  ECCE New Music, premieres under the screen at the Hollywood Theatre  in a flurry of grit, gunsmoke and glockenspiels.

TRAILER FOR 2009 PERFORMANCES

KATU News: Filmusik presents: ‘Death rides a horse’
By: Eric Holmes – Story Published: Jul 15, 2009 at 5:21 PM PDT

PORTLAND, Ore. – While the iconography of Death riding a horse may have been introduced in Revelation 6:8 (And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him), it’s certain that very few have attempted to conjure up exactly what sort of musical score would best accompany the Grim Reaper’s equestrian joyrides.
But alas, there are a few here in the Northwest who have dove head first into such a task, and they are the folks at Filmusik…
read the full article here

RECORDED EXCERPT FROM PERFORMANCE 7/17/09

The interesting effect that live film music has is a heightening of the immediacy of the film itself–the overall project becomes a complex, syncopated, multi-layered ‘happening’, and the audience understands itself as an integral part of the enterprise, not merely a passive bystander to it.
- Lorin Wilkerson – Northwest Reverb
read the full review here