Cellist and composer Lori Goldston’s live film scores draw on years of wide ranging musical experiences and preoccupations, including work with Nirvana, David Byrne, Earth, Ellen Fullman, Mirah, Laura Veirs, the Wedding Present and Cat Power, and with traditional Japanese, Turkish, Brazilian, Chinese and experimental orchestras and chamber groups. Her sound is full, subtle and meticulously rendered, moving easily across a wild spectrum of of influences, including psychedelia, folk and early music.
She has performed her live scores at the Kennedy Center, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Chicago Humanities Festival, Portland’s TBA Festival, On the Boards, the Northwest Film Forum, New York’s River to River Festival, Bumbershoot, the Seattle International Film Festival, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Seattle Jewish Film Festival, WNYC’s New Sounds Live, Olympia Film Festival, Experience Music Project, Contemporary Arts Center in Troy, NY, Minneapolis’s Cedar Cultural Center and Joe’s Pub in NYC.
“Lori Goldston’s affection for the film allowed her to become its full collaborator; her 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.”
Matthew Stadler, Artforum
“Lori Goldston’s accompaniment to the film offered a rare, light touch and restraint that breathes just under the frame…never competing for attention or complicating the vision of the filmmaker.”
James Bond, Full Aperture Systems, Inc., Chicago
Ghosts Before Breakfast and The Seashell and the Clergyman
"Ghosts" directed by Hans Richter
Germany, 1928
"Seashell" directed by Germaine Dulac
France, 1928
55 minutes; 16 mm
Two surreal classics, plus a short subject early trick film, "Down in the Deep". Original score composed and performed by composer/cellist Lori Goldston.
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“Goldston’s score for ‘the Seashell and the Clergyman’ builds a dark and emotionally resonant motif that compliments the surrealsim of the film. Goldston’s cello, filtered through guitar pedals for this film, helps tropes of the silent film that could look melodramatic to a contemporary audience seem once again strange and otherworldy.”
Christy LeMaster, Cinema Borealis, Chicago
The Seashell and the Clergyman is a Surrealist film, directed in 1928 by Germaine Dulac, from a screenplay by Antonin Artaud. At the time of its release the British Film Censors wrote “This film is apparently meaningless, but if it has any meaning it is doubtless objectionable.” Lori Goldston’s solo amplified live cello score taps into the hallucinatory dream-logic of the film.
Director Hans Richter described “Ghosts Before Breakfast” as “a rhythmical story of the rebellion of some objects (hats, neckties, coffee-cups, etc.) against their daily routine;” hats flee skyward, a hose coils itself. Goldston’s live score weaves and dodges through the film’s abstract, lyrical domestic landscape.
This program is available in 16mm.
Other scores available for performance:
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Directed by F.W.Murnau
USA, 1927
94 minutes
Original solo cello score to be premiered by cellist/composer Lori Goldston at the Northwest Film Forum Winter 2010.
Passing Fancy
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu
Japan, 1933
100 minutes
Original score by Lori Goldston. Performed by Lori Goldston, cello; Phil Gelb, shakuhachi (bamboo flute); Greg Campbell, drum set and percussion.
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The Passion of Joan of Arc
Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
France, 1928
90 minutes; 16mm or DVD
Original score composed and performed by composer/cellist Lori Goldston.
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