Newsok.com
Fri October 13,
2006
Devil
Music Ensemble brings ‘Nosferatu’ to life
By Gene Triplett
Entertainment Editor
As grainy black-and-white
images of two 19th century sailors flicker across the screen, heaving what
appears to be a canvaswrapped body overboard, jittery violin and guitar music
builds from the orchestra pit, along with hissing cymbals and pulsating drums,
underscoring a mounting tension and dread. One of the men hefts an ax and casts
a fearful eye downward at what awaits him below decks. He mouths something to
his shipmate, and the intertitles flash onto the screen:
“I shall go down!!! If I haven’t come up again within ten minutes ...”
He doesn’t finish his sentence, as if the rest is unspeakable. The film
cuts to the dark interior of the cargo bay, where the sailor chops away at a
coffin lid, then staggers back as frightened rats spill out of the jagged hole.
The shivering violin strains escalate in intensity. Across the hold, another
coffin springs open, and the sailor gapes in frozen horror as a tall,
blade-thin creature with bulbous head, fangs for front teeth and the elongated
claws of a carrion-eating bird rises from his bed as if on strings.
On the “sound track,” minor chords from a full-volume electric guitar
become a jolting death knell.
The ship of death had a new captain, the intertitles announce.
And the music of Devil Music Ensemble makes the audience feel Graf Orlok’s
chilling presence right down to the marrow, whenever it accompanies a screening
of director F.W. Murnau’s 1922 horror classic, “Nosferatu.”
The classically-trained trio of musicians will provide the live sound track
Wednesday in the Noble Theater of the Oklahoma City Museum of Art,
when actor Max Schrek springs to life once again on the big screen as one of
the ugliest vampires in film history.
“We’re a little bit, like, heard but not seen, for the most part,” Devil
Music’s Jonah Rapino said in a phone interview. “We
really strive to immerse people in the experience (of the silent film) so that
they don’t even realize that there’s a live band playing. And then, so often,
people will be in that state and then they’ll all of a sudden, like, look at us
and realize, ‘Oh, wait a minute, I forgot there was a band playing.’ People
have said that on many occasions.”
The Devil Music Ensemble, formed in Boston in 1999, is comprised of Rapino on electric violin, vibraphone and
synthesizer, Brendon Wood on guitars, lap steel and
synthesizer, and Tim Nylander on drums, percussion and
synthesizer. Rapino, of Toledo, Ohio, received his Bachelor
of Fine Arts in classical music performance from Boston University. Wood, of Tiverton, R.I., has a Bachelor of Fine
Arts in music from the University of Massachusetts.
Nylander holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree
from Harvard.
Since its formation, the group has been a rock trio, an Eastern European
folk band, a country band, and on occasion has expanded into a 40-piece modern
orchestra and a 100-guitar ensemble.
But their specialty is supplying live sound tracks for silent films, and it
all started with Wood’s grandfather.
“His grandfather actually came to one of our shows and we were playing a
rock set, and we had a silent film going on in the background,” Rapino said.
“It was a French surrealist film and just kind of like we were doing a lot of
improvisation at that time, and we were kind of improvising to the film. And he
said to Brendon, ‘Well, Brendon, the music was all right and all, but it didn’t
really match the movie as much as I would have liked.’”
The band members thought that over for a while. They already had a growing
reputation as an experimental rock band that incorporated silent films in their
act.
“We got asked to do a performance at a theater, and so basically to make
his grandfather happy, we sat down and got a group together and really composed
some music for a film,” Rapino said. “And it went really well; it was a packed
audience and people really liked it and the project intrigued us, so we
decided, ‘Why don’t we try this? You know, we’ve done rock tours, why don’t we
try to do a tour with a film?’ So that was our first tour — ‘The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari.’”
Following the 2003 tour with that 1919 German film by Robert Weine, Devil Music hit the trail with
Clifford Elfelt’s 1922 Western comedy, “Big Stakes,” supplying a country and
western sound track. It was easy as falling off a horse. At one time, Rapino had headed a country bar band.
As for rock, the Ensemble is influenced by everything from the hard-core
punk of Black Flag to the Japanese noise-pop of Cornelius, and when Devil Music
is in rock mode, they play like “nothing you’d really hear on a pop radio
station, that’s for sure,” Rapino said.
Their silent film tours have taken them through such venues as the Andy Warhol Museum, the Cleveland Institute of Art,
art-house movie theaters, college campuses and at least one barn.
DME’s latest tour features their score for the 1920 version of “Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde,” directed by John S. Robertson and starring John Barrymore, which is Rapino’s favorite
work to date. Wednesday’s accompaniment of “Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror,”
is a special one-night performance in celebration of Halloween.
“I really love that film,” Rapino said, “but right now the newness of our
newest sound track is the one that I’m really digging, you know what I mean?
“Each film is such an inspiration. You know, you’re sitting in your room,
you’re staring at a blank piece of paper, and like, what’re you going to write?
A lot of times that can be tough. But having all these images in front of you,
it’s really inspired music-making. Each film has just been a really nice
creative vehicle for composition.”
Rapino said the Ensemble would next like to
work with vintage Asian film and the first feature-length animated film from Germany, “The Adventures of Prince Achmed.”
“We’re just really interested in world music and folk music and things like
that,” he said. “And we’re definitely trying to get people under the trance of
the movie, the audio-visual experience.”
Museum Film Curator Brian Hearn said audiences are in for a hypnotic treat.
“Live music quite literally brings silent film to life,” he said. “Until
sound motion pictures were invented in the late ’20s, watching a movie in a
theater typically included a live pianist, organist or even orchestra playing
accompaniment. The ability of musicians to add musical moods, colors and sound
effects to the images on the screen creates a whole new dimension of excitement
to the movie watching experience.
“One of the interesting things about DME is that, not only are they
talented musicians with an appreciation for silent film, they bring a fresh
approach to film scoring by using contemporary electric instruments like
guitars and synthesizers,” Hearn said. “This enables new generations to enjoy
and appreciate silent classics like ‘Nosferatu’ with an updated 21st century
musical score.”
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