Grant Simpson first got introduced to the world of silent movies as a working musician in a vaudeville show in Dawson City, Yukon when he was just 19 years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI was playing the show at night,\u201d he recalls, \u201cand during the day, in the museum, they had an old-time piano player there, playing piano for silent movies in the museum. I\u00a0just loved the idea of it at the time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, Simpson, along with several of his regular collaborators, are getting ready to recapture that magic with the first-ever Winnipeg Silent Movie Festival in Osborne Village this weekend. Although Simpson and his friends have scored silent movies before, this will mark the first time that\u00a0they will\u00a0take on a project of this scale.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Improvising an auditory experience\u00a0<\/p>\n
Armed with the films of early-20th\u00a0century stars such as Abbott & Costello and Buster Keaton, Simpson and his fellow musicians are going into the project with the intention to complete improvise the scores for the films without any prior direction.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a totally experimental improv collective of musicians, and they\u2019re going to tackle three shorts,\u201d says Simpson, adding that the moods of these films range from the stereotypical slapstick to darker, more moody films as well. \u201cThey\u2019re\u00a0not always just like, \u2018Go watch somebody get a pie in the face.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Despite the range of emotions in the films, Simpson says that the musicians that are assembled have already had\u00a0a great time\u00a0preparing for the festival. \u201cIt\u2019s a challenge, as\u00a0you might imagine, to improvise together while watching a narrative film \u2013 you have to kind of figure out how you\u2019re going to do that together,\u201d he says, \u201cso that\u2019s been a real fun process for us musically, and I think we\u2019ve got quite good at it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Film scores formed by friends\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lack of direct preparation for the films does not mean that the groups are not ready for the challenge. Simpson says that many of them have collaborated and improvised together for some time, and that this familiarity will be a key skill that the players will lean on as they create the sonic mood of the films together.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Simpson says that the because of the relationships that already exist between the players, no one intends to make a facsimile of what a soundtrack from the silent movie era would have sounded like. \u201cI used to do that when I started off \u2013 tried to sort of play what\u00a0I though happened in 19900 when they were playing for these movies,\u201d he says, \u201cbut since then, I\u2019ve focused more on just playing my style, but to accomplish the same goal as they accomplished back then.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI try not to just make it a museum piece. I try to make it a living thing today, just embracing the actual tradition.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n