R&P accompany Peck of Dirt at the Tower Groove Records release show. You may be surprised why we eat the pie.
Méliès Fact #3
Georges Méliès was in attendance at the very first public demonstration of the Lumière brothers’ Cinematographe on December 28, 1895. Apparently his early tastes were all about a bunch of people leaving a building, because he was so impressed he tried unsuccessfully to buy their camera.
By Balloon or by Coach: April 5 at the Luminary
Two weeks from today on Thursday, April 5th, we’re opening for the legendary Van Dyke Parks with our St. Louis premiere of our new score for Buster Keaton’s The Balloonatic at the Luminary. We’re pretty excited to open for Van Dyke Parks, especially given that we already have a little bit of history with his work.
A couple of years ago, we and our good friends in Theodore got together to cover a bunch of Parks’ songs mostly from his album Discover America. (If you want to hear the results from the live show we did for AUCW, then you can click here.) During our rehearsals for the cover show, we had a such a blast learning and rehearsing Parks’ music that we just had to see if we could contact him and thank him. We found his email and wrote to him … and Parks even wrote back!
So yeah, we’re looking forward to this show, and we believe that we have just the opener with our new score for Buster Keaton’s The Balloonatic. Our new score for the film employs a somewhat different sonic palette than what we’ve used in the past. The instrumentation is banjo, electric bass, percussion, theremin, trombone, trumpet, violin one and violin two. There’s no piano and no viola, both of which usually are in our previous scores. We like the result, and we hope that you will too. If anything, you won’t want to miss Mr. Parks.
Advance tickets available for purchase online here.
An Evening with Van Dyke Parks
w/ The Rats & People Motion Picture Orchestra
April 5th, 7PM
The Luminary Center for the Arts
4900 Reber Place
St. Louis, MO 63139
Méliès Fact #2
You don’t pronounce the “s” in “Georges,” but you do pronounce the “s” in “Méliès.” Why? Nobody knows. Nobody will ever know.
Méliès Facts
This July we will be playing to a bunch of Georges Méliès shorts. As the date approaches, please enjoy what I sincerely hope to be an ongoing series of MÉLIÈS FACTS.
MÉLIÈS FACT #1: Georges Méliès was the ONLY French filmmaker from the turn of the last century to feature both an acute and a grave accent in his surname.
We’ll be performing our almost-done-being-composed score to Buster Keaton’s short “The Balloonatic” before Van Dyke Parks’ set at the Luminary. Get your tickets soon because I bet you they will sell out.
Matt Pace on piano. Ain’t those First Punch Film Production folks the cutest?
Thank you for the kind words, Riverfront Times. We’re honored.
Invisible Cinema
Heather Rice plays strings on *Invisible Cinema*, the first “fully-realized” solo album of indie rock pioneer Victor Villarreal (Cap’n Jazz, Owls, Ghosts & Vodka, Joan of Arc). Vinyl + MP3 available January 24. Click the link and have a listen to the first track, “Enters”:
