Lambchops at Sunrise
21 February 2005
In an Australian exclusive, Lambchop, a genre-hopping collective of musical pioneers from Nashville, Tennessee, will perform the live soundtrack for a screening of the 1927 silent masterpiece Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans from German expressionist director FW Murnau of Nosferatu fame.
Commissioned originally by the 2003 San Francisco International Film Festival, Lambchop’s performance in Australia is being presented as part of the UWA Perth International Arts Festival line-up it and promises to be an exciting and highly memorable musical and filmic event.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is an ageless story of betrayal and redemption, mapping out the human emotional landscape of an extramarital affair. It is about a man who cheats on his wife and then, in attempting to murder her, finds himself unable to. In his American film debut, Murnau’s blend of European cinema with Hollywood production values earned the film four Academy Awards in 1929 including Best Actress for Janet Gaynor, Unique and Artistic Production and the highly-coveted Best Film.
Lambchop is considered one of the most critically acclaimed bands in the world today, producing a distinctive style of music that hybridizes an array of instrumental sounds and country, jazz and soul styles.
Such themes of love and betrayal - and the possibility of redemption - continue to find resonance today and where in the 1920s and 30s the film’s music would have been provided by a lone pianist, in this collaboration with Lambchop, an entirely new vision is brought to Murnau’s compelling subject. A subject identified by David Thomson as: “the ordinary person’s dream of something more than fate has allowed, and the dread that goes with the dream.”
Lambchop’s performance adds a layer of aural poetry that is as original and as brilliantly conceived as the film it accompanies.
More Information
Sunrise with Live Soundtrack by Lambchop
3 March 2005
8.30pm Perth Concert Hall
Bookings: BOCS Ticketing 08 9484 1133
Website: http://www.perthfestival.com.au/
