Carter Burwell Guests on Morricone Youth, Dec 9 Sunday @ 2-4p ET on EVR

Host Devon E. Levins is excited to welcome one of his favorite film soundtrack composers working today, the acclaimed Carter Burwell live in the studio for an exclusive interview and in-depth listen to his music on Morricone Youth this Sunday at 2pm ET HERE.

With over 80 feature film and television credits, composer Carter Burwell is best known for his longstanding relationship with the Coen Brothers, scoring every film to date (with the exception of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, of course).  His identifiably haunting and brooding style has graced films in nearly every genre, using the occasional big-studio project to finance his work on groundbreaking independent films.  New York City born and bred, Burwell never really considered music as a career while studying animation at Harvard with Mary Beams and George Griffin, electronic music with Ivan Tcherepnin, and independent study at the MIT Media Lab (then known as the Architecture Machine Group).  Upon graduation in 1977, he became a teaching assistant in the Harvard Electronic Music Studio, animated the film Help, I'm Being Crushed to Death by a Black Rectangle, which won first place at the Jacksonville Film Festival and second at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and worked as Chief Computer Scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Long Island, where he wrote software for image processing, lab automation and protein analysis.  Simultaneously, he moonlighted in punk and no wave bands for fun including The Same, Radiante and Thick Pigeon with Stanton Miranda (Factory Records) while writing music for dance (RAB, which premiered at the Avignon Festival in 1984) and theater (The Myth Project at Naked Angels in 1989).


A mutual friend referred Burwell to Joel and Ethan Coen for their debut feature, Blood Simple (1984), leading to the kidnapping caper Raising Arizona (1987), his first fully orchestrated work for gangster film Miller's Crossing (1990), groundbreaking Barton Fink (1991), seven-time academy award nominated Fargo (1996) and through to the ten-time academy award nominated western remake of True Grit (2010).  Burwell's workload increased steadily in the '90s as he took on more mainstream projects: Doc Hollywood (1991), Wayne's World 2 (1993), and Airheads (1994), and winning wide acclaim for Rob Roy (1995), kicking off his most prolific period of over 35 films in the next five years including Conspiracy Theory (1997), The Jackal (1997), Gods and Monsters (1998), glam rock chronicle Velvet Goldmine (1998), Spike Jonze's debut Being John Malkovich (1999), and Gulf War epic Three Kings (1999).  Burwell remained in-demand through the 2000's, reteaming with Spike Jonze for Adaptation and Where The Wild Things Are, Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls (2000) and several installments of the Twilight Saga movie series, while teaching and continuing to compose for dance (The Return of Lot's Wife) and theatre (Cara Lucia, Theater of the New Ear).

Carter Burwell's most recent score was for Seven Psychopaths, a British comedy written, co-produced and directed by Martin McDonagh starring Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson, Tom Waits and Christopher Walken released in the United States on October 12, 2012.  The film marks the second collaboration between McDonagh and Burwell, following In Bruges (2008).  It's a tale about a struggling writer who dreams of finishing his screenplay, "Seven Psychopaths," only requiring a little focus and inspiration.  His best friend, an unemployed actor and part-time dog thief, wants to help by any means necessary along with a partner in crime, a religious man with a violent past.  For some reason the writer has failed to notice that he is a character in a film of the same name, and that nearly every other character in the film and his life is a psychopath.  Lakeshore Records released the soundtrack digitally on October 23, 2012 via iTunes, with a physical release November 20, 2012. For more information on Carter Burwell, visit his website.

Morricone Youth Live Scores The Adventures of Prince Achmed @ Nitehawk 12/7 and 12/8

Lotte Reiniger • 1926 • 65 Mins. • Germany • English & German Subtitles • Digital

This is a LIVE + SOUND + CINEMA event!
MORRICONE YOUTH play live music & soundscape to the film.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is boldly innovative in its approach to animation and charmingly in its adaptation of the ancient “Arabian Nights” tales. The rarely-seen animated feature was produced and directed by Lotte Reiniger, one of the very few women animators to achieve international recognition. The film brilliantly invents a variety of remarkable characters, frightening creatures, exotic locations and challenging topographies using silhouettes, providing a unique monochromatic experience which, in its bold simplicity, puts today’s complicated digital animation to shame. The story is rich with wildly imaginative scene. The film also serves up a wonderfully old-fashioned sense of exotica with glorious Arabesque architecture and set designs, and even the characters’ costumes. The film’s artwork is fluid and graceful, spiced with humor. "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" is not only the oldest surviving animated movie, it's a beautifully innovative and enchanting masterpiece.

The last live scoring screenings sold out so buy tickets in advance HERE!

Chess Music For The Moving Image 11/30/12 Philadelphia Museum of Art

Chess Music for the Moving Image: The Queen Stripped Bare By Her Pawns, Even 
November 30, 2012  Performed by: Morricone Youth

"Chess Music for the Moving Image: The Queen Stripped Bare By Her Pawns, Even" is an interactive multimedia performance  of chance in the spirit of composer John Cage and dance choreographer Merce Cunningham performed by MORRICONE YOUTH, a New York City collective dedicated to the music of  film and other visual medias.  Audience members will be invited
to participate in a game of chess that determines the musical progression of reinterpreted iconic French composed soundtracks interwoven with dance performances and video projections based on the movements of the chess pieces.  The performance is inspired by Marcel Duchamp's painted works leading up to and including The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (1915-1923).  In 1912, Duchamp began to depict  motion and introduce concepts such as "the moving image" into his two-dimensional painted works, influenced by the then emerging new art form known as "cinema."  In 1918, Duchamp took leave from the The Bride Stripped Bare and the art world in general to focus on studying the game of chess before returning to the work in 1920.  In the live and projected chess match, the Bride will be represented by the Queen and the Bachelors by her  Pawns, Knight and Bishop.  

The intersecting work of John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Marcel Duchamp explored the collision between chance, collaboration, and often the game of chess.  The chess game will determine the musical progression of the concert and the movements of the dancers. Matthew Caron and Rebecca Gaffney will create spontaneous visual juxtapositions for each move on the chess board using an array of live cameras, prepared video clips and "ready made" objects curated in the spirit of Marcel Duchamp. This program is offered in conjunction with the exhibition Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp, on view October 30, 2012–January 21, 2013. Two time American Women’s Chess Champion Jennifer Shahade emcees.  

_______________________________________________________________

The Bride (Queen) 

 "Un Homme et Une Femme" from Un Homme et Une Femme (1966) 
composed by Francis Lai 

Station Master (Rook) 
"(Where Do I Begin?) Love Story" from Love Story (1970) 
composed by Francis Lai 

Servant/Flunky (Pawn) 

"Ballade of Melody Nelson/L'Hotel Particulière" from Histoire de Melody Nelson (1971)  
composed by Serge Gainsbourg 

Gendarme (Knight)

 "Where Did Our Summers Go/I Don't Know Why" from La Leçon Particulière (1969) 
 composed by Francis Lai 

The Priest (Bishop) 

"Hello Goodbye" from Hello Goodbye (1970) 
composed by Francis Lai 

Delivery Boy (Pawn)

 "La Valse d'Amélie/L'Autre Valse d'Amélie" from Amelie (2001) 
composed by Yann Tierson 

Cavalryman (Pawn)

 "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) 
 composed by Michel Legrand 

Undertaker (Pawn)

 "Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) 
composed by Michel Legrand 

Busboy (Pawn)

 "Yesterday Yes A Day/First Class Ticket" from Madame Claude (1977) 
composed by Serge Gainsbourg 

Policeman (Pawn)

 "Strip-Tease" from Strip-Tease (1963) composed by Serge Gainsbourg

------------

MORRICONE YOUTH
www.morriconeyouth.com
info@morriconeyouth.com  

Guitar    Devon E. Levins
Bass/Vocals    John Castro 
Keyboards   Dan Kessler 
Tenor/Soprano Saxophone    Fraser Campbell 
Drums/Percussion    Timur Yusef 
Vocals/Accordion    Magda Giannikou 
Live Video Projections    Matthew Caron    Rebecca Gaffney 
Dancers     Medianoche    Ariel Rios 

The Copycat Tribute to Serge Gainsbourg 11/28/12

November 28, 2012
TrashyTravel.com presents
The Copycat Tribute to Serge Gainsbourg
Bands play sets of originals and covers in the back room
DJ Xerox spins all covers up front.
Tonights Bands
Les Sans Culottes-10
Morricone Youth-9
NO COVER
$5 Intoxicated Man Cocktails all night at 

Ottos Shrunken Head

538 East 14 Street, Near avenue B
9 pm to 4 am
L Train to First Avenue

11/18/12 Archive: Lalo Schifrin on Morricone Youth

Photo Credit: Greg Gorman

Listen back to the on-demand archive HERE or via the free EVR Mobile App.

If you are a fan of Morricone Youth, you are a fan of Lalo Schifrin. On this Sunday's special episode, host Devon E. Levins welcomed the acclaimed film and television soundtrack composer, pianist, conductor and arranger for an exclusive interview and in-depth listen to Lalo Schifrin: My Life In Music, the new four-CD boxed set released this week by Aleph Records of music from the legendary composer’s storied career in film, jazz, and classical music.

The boxed-set features music from three-dozen films, jazz and symphonic pieces composed by Schifrin, and unreleased music from films including Charley Varrick, The Beguiled, Joe Kidd and Coogan’s Bluff. Along with over five hours worth of music, a forty-eight page book is included with archival photos and notes.  This release spans music from all aspects of Mr. Schifrin’s career, from the early beginnings of his film music to the big hits that include Mission Impossible, Dirty Harry, Enter The Dragon, Amityville Horror, Bullitt! and Cool Hand Luke.  Also represented is music from his jazz and classical compositions including work commissioned by Dizzy Gillespie, as well as the Grammy-nominated Jazz Meets The Symphony series. The release corresponds with Mr. Schifrin's 80th birthday this year as he continues to work in all three idioms.

Schifrin has written over 100 film and television scores and has been the recipient of five Grammys® (twenty-two nominations), one Cable ACE Award, six Academy Award® nominations and the prestigious Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award as well as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Earlier in his career, Schifrin played piano, composed and/or arranged for Argentine tango bandoneón master Astor Piazzolla, jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and bandleader Xavier Cugat's Latin dance orchestra. Beginning In the late 1960s and through 1980s, he maintained a long working relationship with Clint Eastwood, particularly the Dirty Harry films. In the classical composition field, Schifrin has composed over 60 works.  His music is a synthesis of traditional and twentieth-century techniques, and his early love for jazz and rhythm are strong attributes of his style with a tendency to juxtapose universal thoughts with a kind of elaborated primitivism.

Happy 84th Ennio Show 11/11/12 2-4p ET

Tune into your source for all things soundtrack, Morricone Youth, on East Village Radio this Sunday, November 11, 2012 from 2-4p ET, for Morricone Youth's sixth annual tribute to the namesake of the show, Ennio Morricone. Considered as one of the most influential film composers of all time, composing for over 500 films and selling over 40 million records worldwide, Morricone wrote the film scores to such classics as Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns including "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" (1966), John Carpenter's remake of "The Thing" (1982), Brian De Palma's "The Untouchables" (1987) and Guiseppe Tornarore's "Cinema Paradiso" (1988).


Il Maestro turned 84 yesterday on Saturday, November 10. Host Devon E. Levins will be dedicating an entire two hours to his music in his honor.
Listen live or to the archive HERE!

MORRICONE YOUTH Lives Scores "Nosferatu" 10/27 and 10/31

F.W. Murnau • 1922 • 94 Mins. • Germany • Silent/English Intertitles • Digital This is a LIVE + SOUND + CINEMA event! MORRICONE YOUTH play live music & soundscape for NOSFERATU: A Symphony of Horror Our special Halloween presentation of Nosferatu includes a live pre-show where Morricone Youth performs classic horror movie scores to a curated montage of our favorite scary flicks and a costume contest hosted by Nitehawk’s own Kris King - prizes and candy!

Watching Nosferatu is like standing in the same room as death itself. It's a brooding chamber piece of gothic ruminations, occult imagery, and of the flickering light of the world waging a losing battle against the overwhelming darkness. Tod Browning's Dracula may be the more immediately recognized of the two earliest vampire features but it is Murnau's silent masterpiece to which the entire genre—and then some—owes its existence. Count Orlock, as played by the inimitable Max Schreck (literal translation: "maximum terror"), seems to embody death as it exists for all of mankind, simultaneously bringing in his wake a plague that knows not the limits of gender, class, or beauty. That he requires blood to sustain his torturous existence and that people will fall prey to his thirst are givens here. Orlock, more rat than human, only beckons to his bloodthirsty cravings out of primal, instinctive need, like a junkie looking for the next fix, regardless of how much it prolongs their suffering. Truly, there are things worse than death. Morricone Youth is a New York City music collective formed in 1999 dedicated to performing and recording old film and television soundtrack and library production music. In addition reworking soundtrack covers, the band composes original music much in the same vein for the "imaginary film" as well as for live settings to accompany moving pictures. Thanks to Rocket Rob Patton for the flyerage. We recommend buying tickets in advance online HERE as past live score screenings have been selling out.

Dances of Vice: Experiment in Terror, A Classic Horror Film Music Retrospective (1954-1981) 10/26/12 10:30p

Morricone Youth's 50 Years of James Bond Film Music [ARCHIVE]

This month mark's James Bond's 50th anniversary on screen spanning from the release of Dr. No on October 5, 1962 to next week's Skyfall, on October 23, 2012, now the longest running movie franchise in history.  Tune into your source for all things soundtrack Morricone Youth HERE, when host Devon E. Levins spun his favorite Bond scores and theme songs of the past 50 years including rejected scores and a special sneak peak of the forthcoming soundtrack to be released on Sony Classical for Skyfall on November 6, 2012, consisting of original music written by leading film composer Thomas Newman.  And check out the PLAYLIST. 

From Albert R. Broccoli’s EON Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Sony Pictures Entertainment, Skyfallmarks the debut of distinguished director Sam Mendes in the James Bond franchise.  Daniel Craig is back as Ian Fleming’s James Bond 007, the 23rd adventure in the longest-running film franchise of all time.  In Skyfall, Bond’s loyalty to M is tested as her past comes back to haunt her.  As MI6 comes under attack, 007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost. The film is produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli and written by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and John Logan.

 

Composer Thomas Newman’s uniquely expressive musical style fits perfectly with the humor and slickness of a Bond movie.  His expressive range goes from thunderous and dramatic for the many action sequences to broodingly atmospheric for scenes in which the dark side of the story, marked by mistrust and fear of betrayal, is at the forefront. With its big orchestral effects, this music is equal to the spectacular events that the movie portrays.  Starting with American Beauty in 1999, Thomas Newman has collaborated on all but one of Mendes’ films.  One of the most respected composers in the film business, he has scored more than fifty feature films and has been nominated for ten Academy Awards®, nine times in the category Best Original Score and once for Best Original Song. He has won a BAFTA, two Grammys and an Emmy, and has also been nominated for a Golden Globe.  Born in Los Angeles, he comes from a prominent Hollywood musical dynasty: his father Alfred Newman, brother David Newman, sister Maria Newman and uncle Lionel Newman all composed music for the movies, and his cousin is the noted singer-songwriter and film composer Randy Newman.

 

Newman’s first major work in movies was in 1984 for Reckless and quickly followed by Revenge of the Nerds.  He composed the scores for Erin Brockovich and The Good German for director Steven Soderbergh, as well as for such acclaimed films as Finding Nemo, The Player, The Shawshank Redemption, Wall-E, The Help and The Horse Whisperer.  Newman has composed for television, including the HBO Miniseries "Angels In America," and the theme for "Six Feet Under," which won him Grammys for Best Instrumental Composition and Best Instrumental Arrangement. 

 

Newman joins the exclusive club of Bond composers, notably John Barry (of course! He composed the 007 Theme no less!), George Martin, Bill Conti, Marvin Hamlisch, Michael Kamen, Eric Serra and David Arnold.  The series has produced a considerable number of classic pieces of cinematic music and signature theme songs such as Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger," "Diamond's Are Forever," and "Moonraker," Nancy Sinatra's "You Only Live Once," Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die," Carly Simon's Noboy Does It Better," Duran Duran's "A View To A Kill," Sheena Easton's "For Your Eyes Only," Tina Turner's "GoldenEye," a-ha's "The Living Daylights," Madonna's "Die Another Day" and, next month, Adele's "Skyfall."

Beasts of the Southern Wild Composer Dan Romer on Morricone Youth, Sunday 2pm ET

On Morricone Youth this weekend, host Devon E. Levins welcomes soundtrack composer, songwriter and producer Dan Romer for an exclusive interview and in-depth listen to his recent score for Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Listen live Sun 2-4p ET or to the archive HERE!

Beasts of the Southern Wild earned the Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic) at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and earned director/co-composer Benh Zeitlin the Caméra D’Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.  Six-year-old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) exists on the brink of orphanhood, in a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee.  Buoyed by her childish optimism and extraordinary imagination, she believes that the natural order is in balance with the universe until a fierce storm changes her reality.  Desperate to repair the structure of her world in order to save her ailing father, Wink (Dwight Henry), and sinking home, this tiny hero must learn to survive unstoppable catastrophes of epic proportions.

 
The soundtrack, heralded “a treasure” by Wall Street Journal, the “year’s best score” by Vulture.com and “major contender for soundtrack of the year” by Indiewire.com/ThePlaylist, was composed by Dan Romer and Benh Zeitlin and is currently available via iTunes with a CD release planned for later this year.  Together Romer and Zeitlin created what Variety calls a “resonant score” that “lends real dignity to her [Hushpuppy’s] oddysey.”  “The score was built from the idea that the Bathtub [the fictional setting of Beasts] had its own ‘Auld Lang Syne’ or ‘America the Beautiful’ or ‘We Are the Champions,’” said Zeitlin.  We needed an anthem to express the ferocious, resilient, triumphant mentality necessary to hold out at the end of the world.”  The composers also wanted the film’s score to reflect the point of view of its imaginative young heroine.  Zeitlin continues, "When we made the score, we just thought, What is Hushpuppy thinking about this situation? Let's make music that would reflect what she thinks about what's happening," he said. "If we tried to score it from anybody else's point of view other than Hushpuppy's, it fell flat."  In addition to the original score, the composers searched for a Cajun band that could evoke the particular sound of the Bathtub, full of both verve and tradition. They found that in the Lost Bayou Ramblers, a Grammy®-nominated local group from Pilette, Louisiana.  The legendary band combines the heritage music of their native Southern Louisiana with contemporary twists of rockabilly, punk and swing. 

Working towards a shared vision is not new to Zeitlin and Romer, who have a history of collaboration.  Queens-born and raised Zeitlin was working on his short film Egg when he first met Romer, who engineered the film score for the short.  The next year the two collaborated to co-compose the music for Ray Tintori’s award winning short Death to the Tin Man.  The two also wrote the score for Zeitlin’s short epic Glory at Sea.  “I think Benh intentionally leaves parts of the film for music to fill in,” described Romer.  “And that’s a great way to work – to think that a piece of art isn’t complete until every single creative part is there.  If the film made sense without the music, then the music would be superfluous.”
   

 
In his Brooklyn studio, Dan Romer has produced albums for an array of artists such as Ingrid Michaelson, Jenny Owen Youngs, Ian Axel, He Is We, April Smith, Lelia Broussard, Cara Salimando and Jukebox The Ghost. Listen live starting at 2pm ET on Sunday through this link or via the free EVR Mobile App for iPhone and Droid.

NYC Comic Con Party @ Le Poisson Rouge Tonite

Dances of Vice will be celebrating the golden age of pulp scifi at this New York Comic Con afterparty featuring live music by Morricone Youth, gogo dancers from Mars, and giveaways by Singularity & Co Books! All this followed by a special Disko Nouveaux set from 1-4AM with DJ PUREVILE!

Dress Code: Cosmobabe Realness, Spider from Mars, Retro-future Glamour, Time Travel Chic, etc.

The Gallery at LPR, 158 Bleecker St NYC, 21+

Tickets:$8 in advance, $10 doors
Disko Nouveaux FREE after 1AM!

http://pulpscifi.eventbee.com/

Soundtrack Composer Nathan Johnson Guests on Morricone Youth [ARCHIVE]

Check out this edition of Morricone Youth ARCHIVED HERE where host Devon E. Levins welcomed film soundtrack composer and The Cinematic Underground frontman Nathan Johnson to the program for an exclusive interview and in-depth listen to his music.

As a composer, producer, art director, and songwriter, Nathan Johnson's innovative film scores and hybrid media performances have consistently blurred the lines between stage, screen, music, and narrative. Best known for his unconventional work in film and music, Nathan favors modified, organic instrumentation combined with unique approaches to recording and performing. Nathan Johnson’s creative partnership with writer/director (and cousin) Rian Johnson started when the two were children and has continued throughout their professional lives. Beginning with the critically acclaimed score for their first feature collaboration, Brick, Nathan and his team used and abused a variety of household implements including dinner settings, filing cabinets, cheese graters, and radiators. Any real instruments that were included in the soundtrack were horribly misused: pianos were bolted and tacked, double basses were beaten with mallets, and tuned wine glasses were re-purposed in place of a string section. After developing this "junkyard orchestra", Nathan went on to produce and compose the scores for Rian Johnson's second film, The Brother’s Bloom, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Morgan M. Morgansen series, and the forthcoming Melanie Laurent feature Et Soudain, Tout Le Monde Me Manque, among others.

 Rian Johnson's third film, Looper starring Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt, is perhaps Nathan's most unique score to date, featuring a host of indecipherable instruments along with intertwining rhythms and textures. In preparation for the project, Nathan began gathering a wide range of field recordings and then he and his team created a sort of playable, hybrid found-sound orchestra using those original recordings. The results were combined with live strings and horns to produce deep textures featuring pitched industrial fans, tuned treadmills, and a wide range of intricate rhythmic elements — all looping and cycling on themselves at various speeds.

Nathan continues to compose and produce while fronting The Cinematic Underground, a sprawling artistic collective known for mixing visual art with performance and found-sounds. He is part of the atmospheric pop band Faux Fix, and has produced a variety of independent artists while acting as a concert developer and live show consultant for a number of bands. When he is not creating music, he works as an art director with The Made Shop, a boutique design firm that specializes in graphic and architectural projects. Learn more by visiting www.nathanj.com.

Morricone Youth Live Scores The Adventures of Prince Achmed @ Nitehawk 9/28 and 9/30

 

Lotte Reiniger • 1926 • 65 Mins. • Germany • English & German Subtitles • Digital

This is a LIVE + SOUND + CINEMA event!
MORRICONE YOUTH play live music & soundscape to the film.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is boldly innovative in its approach to animation and charmingly in its adaptation of the ancient “Arabian Nights” tales. The rarely-seen animated feature was produced and directed by Lotte Reiniger, one of the very few women animators to achieve international recognition. The film brilliantly invents a variety of remarkable characters, frightening creatures, exotic locations and challenging topographies using silhouettes, providing a unique monochromatic experience which, in its bold simplicity, puts today’s complicated digital animation to shame. The story is rich with wildly imaginative scene. The film also serves up a wonderfully old-fashioned sense of exotica with glorious Arabesque architecture and set designs, and even the characters’ costumes. The film’s artwork is fluid and graceful, spiced with humor. "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" is not only the oldest surviving animated movie, it's a beautifully innovative and enchanting masterpiece.

The last live scoring screenings sold out so buy tickets in advance HERE!

The Lounge Lizards' Evan Lurie Guests on Morricone Youth [ARCHIVE]

On the September 16, 2012 edition of Morricone Youth, Devon E. Levins welcomed film and television soundtrack composer and founding member of The Lounge Lizards Evan Lurie for an exclusive interview and in-depth listen to his music. In addition to his twenty year tenure in The The Lounge Lizards and releasing three solo albums, Evan Lurie has composed music for over 30 films and television programs including Steve Buscemi's Trees Lounge, Interview and Lonesome Jim, Cindy Sherman's Office Killer, Roberto Benigni's Johnny Stecchino and Il Mostro, Stanley Tucci's Joe Gould's Secret, Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut Jack Goes Boating and four seasons of Nickelodeon's The Backyardigans. Notably each of the 77 episodes of The Backyardigans introduced children to a completely different musical genre.

Evan Lurie previously gained renown as the pianist of The Lounge Lizards formed in the 1970's in the Lower East Side recording nine albums and performing internationally through the late 1990's. Lurie composed some of the band's most memorable songs. His second solo album, Pieces of Bandoneon (1987) was commissioned as the soundtrack to Japanese yakuza film Chochin and his third, Selling Water by the Side of the River (1990), included tracks originally composed for Benigni's Il Piccolo Diavolo soundtrack. His subsequent album on John Zorn's Tzadik label, How I Spent My Vacation (1998), consists of pieces Lurie wrote for many smaller budget films such as Trees Lounge and Danny Leiner's Layin Low, and performances by many of his Lounge Lizard cohort from various incarnations.

The ARCHIVE can be heard HERE and the playlist viewed HERE!

A GROOVY SITUATION w/ Morricone Youth, SMOOTA and Cochemea Gastelum Tue 6/5

"A GROOVY SITUATION" 

 with 

8:30 MORRICONE YOUTH 

9:30 SMOOTA 

10:30 COCHEMEA GASTELUM: The Electric Sound of Johnny Arrow 

Tuesday, June 5, 2012 

Doors 8pm

$10

Union Pool 

484 Union Ave 

Brooklyn, NY 11211 

(718) 609-0484 

www.union-pool.com/

www.myspace.com/cochemea 

www.smoota.com 

www.morriconeyouth.com/ 

Thanks to Rocket Rob Patton for the flyerage: www.twoblacksocks.com

MORRICONE YOUTH Live Scores David Lynch's ERASERHEAD Two Nights! Fri 5/25 and Sat 5/26

• 

• MORRICONE YOUTH    provides live score to  David Lynch's 1979 cult classic  "ERASERHEAD" TWO NIGHTS the closing weekend of Nitehawk Cinema's May-long Late Night David Lynch Series Friday 5/25 and Saturday 5/26 @ midnight, of course. $16 Nitehawk Cinema 136 Metropolitan Ave Brooklyn, NY 11211 (718) 384-3980 for ticketing: http://www.nitehawkcinema.com/movie.php?movie=167 Late Midnite + Loud Movie + Live Music www.morriconeyouth.com/ ______________ Thanks to Rocket Rob Patton for the flyerage: www.twoblacksocks.com

Tribute to Lyricist Hal David (1921 – 2012)

Hal David, the renowned lyricist whose collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach produced endless memorable hits in the '60s and '70s died in Los Angeles on Saturday September 1st. He was 91. The September 9, 2012 radio show is dedicated to his work. His timeless soundtrack work includes Louis Armstrong's "We Have All The Time In The World" from On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Shirley Bassey's "Moonraker," Tom Jones' "What's New Pussycat," B.J. Thomas' "Rain Drops Keep Fallin' On My Head," and Dusty Springfield's "Look of Love" from Casino Royale. You can find a list of his soundtrack hits HERE. You can listen to the archive of the show HERE and/or view the PLAYLIST.

CAN Lost Tapes Box Set

Who knew CAN's beloved "Vitamin C" from the "Ege Bamyasi" LP arose out the soundtrack for Sam Fuller's 1972 TV crime film "Dead Pigeon on Beethovenstrasse," integrating the same flute, percussion, bells, iconic bassline and guitar until 8 minutes in, when Damo begins shouting the vocal to ‘Vitamin C.’   Just the best! "Vitamin C" is now officially re-labeled in my iTunes as a "Soundtrack."

CAN -  Dead Pigeon Suite (edit):


CAN Vitamin C: 


CAN -  Dead Pigeon Suite (in its entire 12m glory):


Check out last week's radio show where and other revealing soundtrack tidbits are unearthed and discussed. Archived HERE. And here is the PLAYLIST.

Joe Strummer's 60th Birthday This Tuesday!

Morricone Youth Celebrates Joe Strummer's Soundtracks This Sunday 2pm ET on EastVillageRadio.com

Be sure to check out Morricone Youth this Sunday at 2pm ET as host Devon E. Levins has something quite special planned for this week's show. 

Many fail to realize that after the official breakup of the "The Only Band That Matters" a.k.a. The Clash in 1986, co-founder, lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Joe Strummer (born John Graham Mellor on August 21, 1952 in Ankara, Turkey), turned to film and film music.  Starting in 1986, Strummer wrote music for and/or acted in three Alex Cox films; Sid and Nancy, Walker and Straight to Hell (the latter named after The Clash song).  In fact, he scored the entire soundtrack to Walker and later more notably scored the Keanu Reeves vehicle Permanent Record, the Jim Jarmusch-produced When Pigs Fly and the George Armitage-directed Grosse Pointe Blank.  Although he made brief appearances in numerous films such as Aki Kaurismaki's I Hired a Contract Killer and F.J. Ossang's Docteur Chance and the television series South Park, Strummer played his most memorable role Jarmusch's classic, Mystery Train, as a drifter named Johnny (also referred to as "Elvis") in the "Lost in Space" sequence of the film opposite Steve Buscemi.  In 1999, Strummer went on to form The Mescaleros with Pablo Cook and Richard Norris, who originally came together to write the soundtracks for two short films, Tunnel of Love and Question of Honour.  Before Strummer's death on December 22, 2002, The Mescaleros went on to release three albums and contribute notable songs for films Black Hawk Down and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and provided the theme song to HBO's John From Cincinnati.


The show will be archived HERE!

Interview: Devon Goldberg of Morricone Youth Talks Live Scores and Fantastic Planet

See Morricone Youth perform their score for Fantastic Planet on Friday, August 10 and Saturday, August 11 at Midnight

Devon of Morricone Youth interviewed by Hatched for upcoming Fantastic Planet Live Score.  Check out the original interview HERE!

Devon Goldberg’s band, Morricone Youth, has been performing in and around New York for over a decade. Dedicated to playing music designed with the moving image, Morricone Youth performed live-scores to several films at Nitehawk, including Jean Rollin’s erotic horror film Fascination, David Lynch’s weird opus Eraserhead and F. W. Murnau’s wildly ambitious Sunrise. This weekend Goldberg and his band of talented cineastes are returning to Nitehawk to perform their score of Rene Laloux’s surreal and lovely Fantastic Planet.

Hatched reached out to Goldberg to talk about his relation to the film, how he and the group prepared and how to re-work the score while paying respect to the original.

Hatched: How did you approach scoring Fantastic Planet? Were you familiar with the film before you worked on the score?

Devon Goldberg: This was a bit different from the others we have done in the past. Many in the band were quite familiar with the film and it’s possibly our keyboardist’s favorite film of all time. I personally saw the film in the early 90′s and became obsessed with Alain Goraguer’s original score and have deejay-ed the track “Deshomination I” for many years.  You hear it’s influence in bands like Air, Radiohead and Stereolab as well as with the endless hip hop producers who have sampled it. I re-watched the film last summer strangely while considering live scoring it for another venue that asked us to do it.

H: Did you take Fantastic Planet’s existing score into consideration while writing your own version?

DG: I concluded that the original music is too iconic and I didn’t want to do the film any injustices so we decided on something else. When Nitehawk curator John Woods asked us this summer to consider doing it for his birthday weekend, we decided we should do it but instead in a way that pays direct homage to the original score. In other words, we are learning the central orchestrated pieces and themes and reinterpreting them the best we can as a six piece band. Besides the improvised portions which we will derive from the original themes, everything we do will be based on Goraguer’s original score. It is a tough score written in deceptively odd meters and unusual instrumentation. To prepare, we have watched the film endlessly, each taking copious notes, and started playing live to the film on mute in our practice room two weeks ago.

H: What scenes in Fantastic Planet were you looking forward to working on the most?

DG: Truthfully, the intro scene when the mother is being chased is my favorite and pretty challenging with a lot of interesting chords and strange hits/stops. The striptease scene theme music is beautiful as is the waltz towards the end (“Les Fusees”)… and, um… as the guitarist, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I was kind of looking forward to the David Gilmour-esque big rock guitar solo on the End Credits theme….

H: Do you find that writing the score for an animated film somehow different or more challenging than writing for a film that’s live action?

DG: Being that we didn’t per se “write” the score for this one, as we normally do, I’m not sure how to answer this question. If we had, I suspect that it would not be much different as there is quite a bit of action in the film regardless of it being animated as well as there being deep underlying socio-political concepts attributed to the plot, in addition to its surrealist imagery.

H: How much of these scores are worked out ahead of time and how much is improvised during the movie?

DG: We approach every live scoring project differently. It all depends on the film, the film’s original score and our relationship to it. We always try to pay homage to the original score in every case by at least quoting, if not, reinterpreting a memorable portion of it. For Fascination, we quoted “La Vaise Crincante,” the waltz music of the women dancing on the bridge in the title sequence and “L’Interieur Des Ecuries,” the music for the first sex scene. Otherwise, we really wanted to write more driving music in the style of some of our favorite 70′s horror film music.

For Eraserhead we HAD to reinterpret “In Heaven” aka “The Lady in the Radiator Song” by Peter Ivers since we actually perform that song live in clubs. Our singer reverse lip-synched it providing the vocals to the muted film which is actually pretty challenging since Laurel Near does not sing the song in perfect time on screen.

For Sunrise, it was Charles Gounod’s “Funeral March of a Marionette,” which… is more widely known as the theme to the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” television series, [but]… appeared nearly three decades before in Sunrise.

So, the first thing we do is figure out what from the original score we are going to use and then go from there.  Sunrise was pretty much completely scored from the beginning to the end (which makes it tough), while Fascination was 75% scored/25% improvised and the opposite with Eraserhead (25% scored/75% improvised).

With Sunrise and Fascination, I brought the film itself into my Protools treating them like I would if I were truly being asked by the director to score the film.  So again, it really depends on the film itself and what it involves.

Regardless, any of the improvisation is pretty controlled as far as improvisation is concerned since we really have the film’s sections well mapped out so any improvised part is usually based on a predetermined theme or at least concept or sound but there are always happy accidents, of course, which work their way through it all and make the performances random, exciting and different each night.

http://nitehawkhatched.com/2012/08/07/interview-devon-goldberg-of-morricone-youth-talks-live-scores-and-fantastic-planet/

Morricone Youth performs entire Alain Goraguer score to Fantastic Planet LIVE

 

MORRICONE YOUTH will provide LIVE music and soundscape for Fantastic Planet at Nitehawk Cinema Fri 8/10 and Sat 8/11 midnight. 

Rene Laloux • 1973 • 72 Mins. • France

A testament to the power of imagination and the limitless possibilities of animation, this masterpiece must been seen to be believed. Even the plot, let alone its visual style is difficult to explain: enormous blue beings known as Triages hold complete dominion over the comparatively infinitesimal human-like Oms. The Traags hold the Oms in relative slavery, with little to no access to basic knowledge but as the captives soon find out, knowledge is power and plan a rebellion against their overseers. As with most Eastern European animation at the time, the story stands as an allegory for the dominion that blanketed free speech courtesy of the Iron Curtain. In fact, the creative process was forced to relocate to France from Prague in order to escape threats by KGB enforcers. Ultimately, the final product is one of the oddest aesthetics ever created, including the most convoluted and intricate sex scenes ever committed to film.

7/29/12: FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY RADIO SHOW

Check out the 5 Year Anniversary Show Archived HERE on July 29, 2012!!! And here is the PLAYLIST!

June 21, 2012: Happy 80th BDay Lalo Schifrin

Listen to Morricone Youth's tribute to Lalo Schifrin for his 80th Birthday June 21, 2012 [ARCHIVE]  and check out the playlist HERE.  Sun, 24 Jun 2012 12:51:06

 

In honor of legendary film and television composer, pianist and conductor Lalo Schifrin's 80th birthday, Morricone Youth paid tribute to one of the show's biggest influences. If you missed it, check out the on-demand archive at the bottom of the page. 

Schifrin (nee Boris Claudio Schifrin) was born 80 years ago today in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has written over 100 film and television scores including Mission Impossible, Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Amityville Horror, Enter The Dragon, four of the Dirty Harry films, and more recently the Rush Hour trilogy. Lalo Schifrin has won five Grammys along with multiple Oscar noms and has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Also just announced last week, Lalo Schifrin will be the recipient of the prestigious Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award to be presented on October 22 of this year during the Hollywood of Vienna concert. 

“I am very fortunate to have been invited by the City of Vienna to receive the Max Steiner Lifetime Achievement Award,” said Schifrin. “This means so very much to me because of the great legacy that this implies, especially because of its music history.”

 

Encore: Morricone Youth Live Scores Fascination Northside Festival

Encore: Morricone Youth Live Scores Jean Rollin's "Fascination" for Opening Night of the Northside Festival in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at Nitehawk Cinema Monday 6/18


Fascination | Dir. Jean Rollin | 80min | France | 1979 | French

This erotic horror film, set in 1905, tells the story of a thief (Jean-Marie Lemaire) who seeks refuge in a castle owned by two women, Eva (Brigitte Lahaie) and Elizabeth (Franca Mai). Their seductive behavior toward the uninvited guest soon gives way to the revelation that they are part of an aristocratic cult of vampires.
Buy tickets here
Buy badges here

http://www.northsidefestival.com/film/film-schedule
http://www.nitehawkcinema.com/movie.php?movie=143

Morricone Youth tonite Tue 6/5 @ Union Pool 8:30p w/ Smoota and Cochemea Gastelum

MORRICONE YOUTH w/ special guest sax player Dave Spinley and drummer Kenny Shaw is playing tonight Tues 6/5 at Union Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at 8:30p with friends SMOOTA aka Dave Smoota Smith 9:30p and The Electric Sound of Johnny Arrow aka Cochemea Gastelum 10:30p.   $10      http://union-pool.com/calendar/

The Zombie Apocalypse is Here!

In the wake of what one can only describe as a Zombie Apocalypse, one must get prepared.  Zombie Prepared.  Join host Devon E. Levins on Morricone Youth at East Village Radio today from 2-4p ET, Sunday May 27th, for two hours of unadulterated flesh-eating horror music around.  Listen live or to the archive HERE!

Nitehawk Cinema's John Woods on Morricone Youth

On Morricone Youth yesterday, Sunday May 20th, host Devon E. Levins welcomed John Woods, Cinema Director of Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg to curate the show. Many may recognize John as the co-founder of Williamsburg's Reel Life Video back in 1997...or as the lead singer of New York hardcore band Hell No (1991-1999)...or as the editor of hardcore fanzine Hot Poop (1990-1993)...or as the documentarian of Stay High 149...but he also currently wears the hat of Cinema Director at Nitehawk Cinema as well as that of an ardent soundtrack collector.  We think he knows a thing or two about film and film music.

For those not in the know, Nitehawk Cinema is a unique triplex movie theater located at 136 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, BK featuring first run films with individual table-side food and beverage service inside each of their three theaters in addition to having a separate bar and cafe for those waiting to see a film.  The menu, designed by Saul Bolton, owner of Saul in Boerum Hill and The Vanderbilt in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, includes a selection of made-over classic film-watching snacks, as well as full entrees, desserts, specialty popcorn, cocktails, beer and wine.  Programming also includes monthly "Live Music & Moving Pictures" and "Midnight Music Movie" series of silent films and midnight movies, respectively, both scored by live musicians and bands, Q&A screenings with directors and actors, Raspberry Brothers comedy/sing-a-longs to classic bad movies, and children-friendly weekend brunch screenings.  Nighthawk was recently announced as one of the curators for the upcoming Northside Film Festival this summer.

John Woods will be spun and discussed his favorite soundtrack vinyl for the entire action-packed two hour installment of Morricone Youth.  Listen HERE!