Featuring a live score by an ensemble led by Barry Paul Clark a.k.a. Cathedral Becomes Tomb
Utilizing an individually developed composition technique based on text prompts and letters, Wisconsin based musician, composer, improviser and multimedia experimental artist Barry Paul Clark (member of Field Report, Tontine Ensemble, Cathedral Becomes Tomb) has prepared a score to accompany Robert Wiene’s 1920 silent film “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” The score not only utilizes the contemporary composition technique, but calls for extensive use of improvisation, and in doing so, Barry has curated an ensemble of some of southeastern Wisconsin’s finest and most celebrated experimental/improvising musicians.
Originally constructed as a six-piece chamber ensemble and debuted in October of 2023 as a part of Milwaukee’s Cactus Club Moving Image Series, this reconfigured application of the score brings a quartet of Barry Paul Clark (bass/electronics) along with Steve Gallam (alto saxophone/shruti box), Pedro Gutierrez (keyboard), and Warren Enstrom (bassoon) together at the 2024 Sound Unseen Festival in Rochester, MN for two screenings of Wiene’s classic German Expressionism film for two unique expressions of live music accompaniment on Saturday December, 7th.
ABOUT THE FILM:
In 1920, one brilliant movie jolted the postwar masses and catapulted the movement known as German Expressionism into film history. That movie was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a plunge into the mind of insanity that severs all ties with the rational world. Director Robert Wiene and a visionary team of designers crafted a nightmare realm in which light, shadow and substance are abstracted, a world in which a demented doctor and a carnival sleepwalker perpetrate a series of ghastly murders in a small community.