Story: Ralph Greco, Jr.
Blu-ray cover, credit: Kino Lorber; Press photo, credit: Matt Wittmeyer
Five-time Emmy-winning composer
Jeff Beal makes his
Carnegie Hall debut on
June 3 at
7:30 P.M. EST, leading the
Silver Nitrate Big Band and
Fourth Wall Ensemble in a performance of his new score for the iconic Weimar-era silent film
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (dir. Robert Wiene, 1920). Tickets start at $18 and are on sale now via the Carnegie Hall Box Office
HERE.
Presented by Silver Nitrate in the legendary Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall, the concert will feature a big band and twelve-voice choir performing alongside the F.W. Murnau Foundation’s restoration of the film, which will be available on home video with Beal’s score when Kino Lorber releases the film in a new Blu-ray and 4K UHD edition later in 2024.
Responsible for catapulting German Expressionism into the mainstream, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari marks the second installment in Beal’s Weimar Trilogy of silent films, in which the renowned composer creates works in tandem with classic films from the silent era. It follows Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (dir. F.W. Murnau, 1927), which was commissioned and premiered by the LA Master Chorale in 2020, with more details on the third installment to come.
Beal notes:
“I received the commission for Caligari in April 2020 as the covid pandemic was racing around the globe. At that same time in the U.S. a political firestorm was enveloping the country, culminating in the events of January 6, 2021. The capacity for evil, manipulation, madness and tragic fantasies Wiene explored so powerfully in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 1920 had become tragically apparent.
My goal was to compose a score to Caligari which would serve the eternal, visceral themes of the film, while delivering the emotion and catharsis a great suspense film is capable of. I freely drew on several sources of inspiration for my materials: Jazz, 2nd Viennese school extended harmony, Kurt Weill, Freud, Jung and my own sensibility for film music.”
Born and raised in San Francisco and based in New York City, five-time Emmy winning composer Jeff Beal has composed scores for several critically acclaimed TV and film projects, working with directors including Ed Harris (Pollock, Appaloosa), David Fincher (House of Cards), Oliver Stone (JFK Revisited, The Putin Interviews), Lauren Greenfield (The Queen of Versailles, Generation Wealth) and contributing scores to HBO’s Rome, Carnivàle, The Newsroom, USA’s Monk and several documentaries such as Blackfish, The Price of Everything, Weiner, An Inconvenient Sequel, Athlete A and Boston. In addition to his scoring career, Beal is a prolific composer of concert music, having studied composition with Christopher Rouse and Rayburn Wright at Eastman School of Music. His recent commissioned works include “The Paper-Lined Shack” for Leonard Slatkin and Hila Plitmann, “Moss #5” for Jaqueline Bulgasi Dance, “Body In Motion” for violinist Kelly Hall-Tompkins and more.
Ralph Greco, Jr. is the devilishly clever nom de plume of professional writer/musician Ralph Greco who lives in the wilds of suburban New Jersey. He is also a podcast co-host, but as everyone has a podcast these days, this fact is of very little consequence.Ralph can be reached by writing ralphiedawriter@gmail.com
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