Film Festival 09 - Neil Brand, The Silent Pianist Speaks
Neil Brand, The Silent Pianist Speaks
60m
Neil Brand composes music for cinema, theatre and UK TV, He scored
- with theremin - the haunted house classic The Cat and the Canary.
Actor, writer and teacher, he is also one of the finest exponents
of improvised silent film accompaniment in the world. It's that
particular talent that he discusses and demonstrates in this funny,
illuminating, and entertainingly interactive show which he
originally devised for the Edinburgh Fringe. It's a great primer on
the ways music can direct our responses, but even seasoned
musicians-for-film stand to learn something from the way Brand
responds to a movie. The show culminates in a performance for
footage he hasn't seen, talking through the scoring process as he
plays and struggles to make some sense of the film. His
enthusiastic, generous and laconically unpretentious introduction
reveals an artistry that's much more extraordinary than he appears
to realise
