Portishead’s Adrian Utley has teamed up with Will Gregory of Goldfrapp to create a new score for the classic 1928 French film, The Passion Of Joan Of Arc. Long regarded as a masterpiece of cinema, director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s film about the last days of Joan of Arc will be screened on Oct. 29 at 7:30 p.m. in the Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and will be accompanied with a live performance of the new score by Utley and Gregory, along with an eclectic ensemble comprising six electric guitars, a choir, harps, percussion, horns and keyboards.
Made in France, the original film was released at the close of the silent era and offers a powerful portrait of psychological torment and martyrdom, as it follows Joan’s trial, imprisonment, torture and execution. The original film negative was lost for decades and only discovered by accident in the cupboard of a Norwegian mental institution in 1981. Although both Utley and Gregory come from substantial classical music backgrounds, their unique aesthetic focuses on guitar harmonics and pitch-bending synthesizers. The music incorporates extended techniques for instruments and voices, providing a powerful landscape for this remarkably moving silent film.
