Ran Blake: CAT PEOPLE at New England Conservatory of Music

[ghost of miles]

From Ran's e-mail newsletter:

Cat People Draws Near

October 30 at Jordan Hall

Ran has spent most of his waking moments for the past month preparing for

Cat People, the fall student performance at the New England Conservatory on October 30. Ran is referring to it as the "biggest production of my life." He very much hopes his friends in the Boston area will attend what is sure to be an exciting and thought-provoking show.

The evening will include performances of music from Jacques Tourneur's famous 1942

film of that title, as well as film clips from Val Lawton's

Leopard Man and I Walked with a Zombie.

Here's a preview, in Ran's words:

"Performers play simultaneously to a carefully selected and edited film repertoire. The images of these films inform the music emotionally, as well as create a linear, storyboard-like structure for their organization. The material for the improvisations mostly comes from short melodic themes widely known by the students so that they may interact, and so that an audible thread may trail through the concert. These themes range from old standards to a tone row by Shostakovich. Overall the performers will be balancing tremendous musical freedom with the oppression and imprisonment of evil -- cats in and out of their cages.

"A challenge, and hopefully a delightful one, will be for you, the audience, to discern the plot of two stories told together. One expressed by the relationship between the performer and the film images, which journeys from a zoo in Central Park, New York City, to the tropics via New Mexico. And the second story expressed by the subtle undercurrent of motives passed and recomposed amongst performers."

Performers will include Eleni Odoni, Dave Fiuczynski, Hankus Netsky, Jameson Swanegon, Anthony Coleman, Dominique Eade, Alla Cohen, Ashley Paul, Giacomo Merega, Leo McFadden, Dorothy Clark,

and many others.

The 8 p.m. concert, at Jordan Hall, is free.

I love I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE--great underrated 1940s horror/noir film. Not the first time I wished I lived in the Boston area!

Edited October 19, 2006 by ghost of miles