Nick Medley/Emerald
Kyle Sanna watches a TV screen lor the scene changes during his band’s rehearsal of ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' Wednesday in 180 PLC.
Student composer
jazzes up silent film
Kyle Sanna will perform
his score at a showing of
the film next week
By Peter Breaden
Oregon Daily Emerald
Kyle Sanna looks a little pale, a
little crazed. For six months, he
has been formulating and com
posing the score for the silent fi lm
"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.”
“There have been a lot of jokes
at the music school — people call
ing me Kyle-gari,” he said after
Wednesday’s dress rehearsal. He
doesn’t expect to be enormously
relieved after the four shows.
“No. It’s definitely made me
want to check some more stuff
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3:00-7:00 p.m. EMU Food Court
Indoor tailgate party to watch
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Big screen TVs
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9:00 p.m. - 1:00 a.m.
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student ID required
costume and swing dance contests with prizes
10:30 p.m. - 2:00 a.m.
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Pre-show contests with prizes
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$3 UO student without costume
$5 general public
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12:00-2:00 a.m.
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Sponsored by:
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out," said Sanna, a jazz studies
major.
The post-World War I, German
expressionist film runs in PLC180
tonight and Saturday at 7 p.m.
with two more shows at 7 p.m. on
Nov. 6 and 7. Sanna plays electric
guitar while conducting a five
piece band that accompanies the
film.
Sanna chose the film early last
summer and began composing
songs for each scene during the
hour-long film.
“I checked out a silent movie
every night,” he said. “Each one I
watched as if it was going to be the
one.”
The silent film’s score is more
prominent, especially because it’s
live, Sanna said.
“What I set out to do was to cre
ate an accompaniment. I almost
want the audience to forget about
the music,” he said.
Sanna has written “Free” for
certain scenes, allowing the musi
cians to create mayhem by impro
vising parts of each performance.
“Busy, busy stuff,” student mu
sician Matt Shevitz said about the
score. “It’s not as much the charac
ters we’re trying to get as the pan
ic.”
The film begins as a story told
by a mental patient, Francis. He
describes a carnival that came to a
small German town called Hol
stenwall.
The doctor draws the interest of
the town when he reveals his
bizarre sideshow, Cesare, a som
nambulist (one who walks or per
forms an act while sleeping). Ce
sare shakes up the town with a
horrific prophecy.
“It’s strange,” Sanna said,
“there aren’t really any movies
that were imitating that movie. It
was highly influential, but there
aren’t any Caligari copiers.”
“Caligari” was easy to compose
for as an expressionist film, San
na said.
“It was especially vibrant,” he
said. “It really was fairly easy to
incorporate the music with that
film.”
The expressionist acting draws
the music to a psychotic fervor.
“Their movements are reduced
to the bare minimum. It creates a
very straight-forward expression
of the characters’ inner feelings,”
Sanna said.
The EMU Cultural Forum is
sponsoring “Caligari,” the second
film in the past year with a stu
dent-written score. The first film
ran last spring when Brian
McWhorter arranged a jazz score
for the film "Metropolis.” Sanna
played guitar in McWhorter’s
band.
Sanna’s artistic influences
come from rock, jazz and atonal
classical music.
The score’s eerie instrumenta
tion consists of Shevitz playing
clarinet and soprano saxophone,
Daniel Powell on bassoon and
tenor sax, Daniel Stotz on double
bass, Randy Rollofson on drums
and Sanna on electric guitar.
“I wanted instruments that
could capture that carnival
sound,” Sanna said. “I found the
players to fit that... people trained
not only classically but in jazz.”
Three of the musicians alternate
between two instruments, with
Powell and Shevitz each playing
two instruments and Stotz play
ing the bass bow.
For Sanna, composing is no
chore.
“How can you count the time
that you spend composing? I’ll be
composing walking to Cafe
Roma.”