Andrew Cowen on the Birmingham Post Blog has news of the Electric Cinema‘s new in-house eight piece orchestra.
In a unique twist on cinema organists from the silent movie era, the Electric Cinema Film Orchestra play live music along to specially edited highlights from some of the world’s greatest films. Cinema owner and professional soundtrack composer, Tom Lawes came up with the idea when he discovered most of his staff were professionally-trained musicians. “I always knew my staff were talented but when I found out that we had, amongst other things, a drummer, bass guitarist and saxophonist working here I decided to create the country’s first in-house film orchestra,” he said.
Their first gig is this Friday 20th at 11pm where they’ll be playing along to specially selected scenes from Apocalypse Now, Walk the Line, The Wall, Pulp Fiction and The Blues Brothers. Tickets are £8 or free if you’re watching the preceding film. Details here.
While this isn’t a new idea – we’ve had a number of musicians accompanying silent movies in Birmingham recently – it’s the first time I’ve heard of modern films being treated in this way. It’s also interesting to note The Electric are doing “late night parties”.
Naturally the orchestra has a MySpace page though sadly without any music yet. Nice photos though, including the above.