Originally commissioned in 1998 by New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center, Phillip Johnston’s original score for Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Japanese silent experimental horror film A Page of Madness has not been performed in Sydney since the 2008 Sydney Film Festival, where it drew 850 to the State Theatre.
Phillip is renowned for his new scores for silent films including Tod Browning’s The Unknown (1926), F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1926), and Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) and others, which have been performed in Australia and internationally. Australian performances have included Sydney Film Festival, Sydney Opera House, Vivid, Melbourne Festival of the Arts, MONA FOMA, Woodford Folk Festival, Revelation Perth Film Festival, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, National Film and Sound Archive and Melbourne International Jazz Festival. He has also performed his silent film music at Frank Sinatra’s high school in Hoboken, New Jersey.
In earlier incarnations, Phillip has played with John Zorn, Ned Rothenberg, Gary Lucas, Julius Eastman, Shelley Hirsch, Joe Fiedler and many many others.
Chris Abrahams and Lloyd Swanton are two-thirds of The Necks, “the greatest trio on earth” according to Geoff Dyer in The New York Times. Lloyd also leads The Catholics and has performed, as both a leader/co-leader and side-person, with a who's who of Australian musicians, including The Benders, Bernie McGann, Clarion Fracture Zone, The Alister Spence Trio, Vince Jones and beyond.
Chris is also known for his extensive solo work and collaborations across an astonishingly wide variety of genres and media, including The Vampires, Melanie Oxley, Mike Cooper, Jon Rose, Clayton Thomas and The Sparklers.
Daryl Pratt is founder of MATCH Percussion (formed with his wife Alison in 2001) and The Daryl Pratt Sextet (founded in 2009), and has recorded for the ABC, Lovely Music, Naxos, CRI, Rufus Records, EFA, VoxAustralis, Fleur de Son Classics, Move Records, and Tall Poppies.
A Page of Madness by Teinosuke Kinugasa was premiered in Tokyo in 1926 and was an immediate success, despite its expressionist/surrealist style and lack of intertitles. Lost for 45 years, it was rediscovered by Kinugasa in his storehouse in 1971 and restored by the director. The film is the product of an avant-garde group in Japan known as the Shinkankakuha (or School of New Perceptions) who tried to overcome naturalistic representation. The film is set entirely in a mental institution.
The feature will be preceded on the night by a short: the world premiere of a live performance for Bhanu Pratap’s Big Head Pointy Nose, a comic brought to life in the style first developed for Johnston’s collaboration with Art Spiegelman, Wordless!, which was commissioned and premiered by the Sydney Opera House in 2013. This is part of Johnston's new project of music for comics.
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