Renée Falconetti as Joan of Arc.
“A few nights later, in the repurposed industrial shed called the Works, Seattle musician Lori Goldston took an entirely different tack, playing cello to Carl Theodor Dryer’s silent ‘La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc’ (1928). The resultant dialogue — a counterpoint of acquiescence and resistance — was deeply ambivalent, complex where Miller’s treatment had been reductive. Perhaps her affection for the film is what allowed her to become its full collaborator. Goldston has responded live to Dreyer nearly as often as Miller has dealt with Griffith, yet she managed to be truly ‘live’ — present where Miller was, at best, indifferent.
“Goldston’s music constituted a kind of physical enactment of listening. She began in silence — absorbing the moment and the film — and then her sound emerged, shifting and responding to what she took in. This dynamic, listening (as well as its companion problem of not being heard), was a constant problem at the Works. In the bigger halls, it rarely appeared to matter. Performances on the main stages, whether pleasing or disappointing, came and went as thought the moment was neither here nor there, simply a wrinkle in the endlessly unfolding fabric of the artist’s motion through the world.”
— Excerpt from an article by Matthew Stadler, Artforum
about the 2005 TBA Festival in Portland, Oregon, contrasting Lori’s performance with an earlier show by Paul Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky, a live electronic soundtrack with D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation.”
When performing her dream-like cello score to accompany Carl Dreyer’s 1928 silent film masterpiece, “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” Lori Goldston’s been praised for keeping it a truly live experience — even for her. Drawing from medieval secular and liturgical music, free improvisation and electronics, the score was originally commissioned by Emily Charles of the Fine Arts Theater in Berkeley in July of 1998.
“The grammar of editing has changed over the years so sometimes it’s hard for people to watch silent films,” she says. Studying the film and the filmmaker, she uses music to translate the movie’s original intent, helping people appreciate mood, pace and timing.
Lori felt privileged when her accompaniment to “The Passion of Joan of Arc” debuted with an introductory talk by Marie Falconetti, daughter of Renée, whose performance as Joan has been described as one of the finest ever recorded on film. In addition to accompanying the film at such venues as Time-Based Art Festival and Northwest Film Center in Portland, Oregon, the Olympia Film Festival and for the Pike Street Cinema and Shining Moment Films in Seattle. Lori collaborated with producer Tucker Martine to record it.