Mark Dresser

Could you speak to us about your first works with silent movies ?
My first experience with silent film was writing for "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari." This film was suggested by my booking agent at the time, Ralph Gluch, who convinced me that I needed a film to perform to in order for him to book me as a leader. Up to that point I had been touring only as a sideman. What started out as a purely pragmatic decision on my part has developed into a direction that I truly enjoy; especially now since I'm working with living film makers. My first score was written  specifically for Douglas on trumpet & pianist, Denman Maroney and myself. My second score was the Luis Bunuel/Salvador Dali collaboration, "Un Chien Andalou written  for  pianist Anthony Coleman and Chris Speed on woodwinds.

Are you a film buff and do you think it is necessary to be a film buff to work with silent movies ?
I enjoy film a lot but I'm not a film buff per se. My knowledge isn't comprehensive. I've haven't studied film in the same way I've sought out music. One of the reasons I chose to work with Anthony Coleman is because he truly is a film aficionado.When we decided to work together we viewed many films until we decided to pair Un Chien Andalou which I scored & Jean Vigo's "A Propos de Nice,." which he wrote the score. It was a natural pairing. 

Generally how did you approach the work with silent movies ?
First I  watch the film many times until I get a feel for the structure and an idea about a possible approach. Then I start improvising with the video and record my improvisations. I then transcribe any ideas that I think have compositional potential. Once transcribed then I start to develop and expand the materials. I repeat this whole procedure until I've enough material.  For Caligari and Un Chien Andalou I generated   a series of leitmotifs assigned to different characters and/or scenes. Once the score was completed the trio began intensive rehearsing in which we played the materials and experimented  with improvising transitions. Next came a rewriting process. I generally do some editing and rewriting once I determine  how the material is working. Once the score is truly finish we codify our improvisational approaches. In the end we have a solid structure though the transitions differ night to night. My objective is to amplify and reinforce the directors intention. Obvious ly this is subjective, especially with the historic films. From the beginning of working with silent film, I thought it would be really gratifying to work with living film makers to make a project from scratch.. I've always enjoyed the collaborative process.  On my first trio tour with Denman and Matthias in 1999, digital artist Tom Leeser and Alison Saar, approached us asked if they could make  a video to my piece, "Subtonium". I said "Sure, but can you do it so we can perform it live". In this case, the video was made to a recorded performance of the piece. This was the exact opposite approach to the normal music to silent film process in which the music is conceived after the fact. The piece  is  a structured improvisation.
Tom Leeser wanted to make us a second film. In 2001 I sent him a recording for "Sonomatopoeia" which is a much more detailed structured improvisation than Subtonium. He wanted this film to be a video score for us, not just a visual realization. In 2000 I briefly met the  film maker and animator, Sarah Jane Lapp, at the MacDowell Colony. I saw some of her work and immediately vibrated to it. In exchange for some solo recordings for a film of hers, she agreed to make me a 5 minute solo animation, "Chronicles of An Asthmatic Stripper." We worked together  closely on the whole process. She'd fax me a storyboard and I started taping  thematic materials, playing them over the phone to her. I thought that the trio would perform it, but once finally assembled, my timings were way off and I decided to do it for solo bass. 

There is in this movie several levels of reading. How did you work more precisely to create a music which was on the same levels of complexity and intensity of the movie ?
I addition to viewing the film many times I read a lot about the movie. In one book by Michael Budd, "The German Film Industry and the Making of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990), I learned a very interesting fact that gave me a different understanding of the film. The story of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was written by a Czech whose name I don't recall. The original story was a direct political satire about Germany leading to WWI, in which Caligari was the symbol for the government hypnotizing the somnambulist, Cesare, a symbol for a 'sleepwalking' German public, carrying out murder on its behalf. Robert Weine, the director, realized that this kind of satire in Germany would be commercial suicide, so he slapped on a beginning and ending that frames the story as the delusions of a madman in a mental institution. This pragmatic device totally reorients the intent of the film. This was a commercial decision.  This film is also famous for its expressionistic painted sets. Weine admired a wonderful painter of the period, whose name I don't recall. The studio couldn't afford the real artist, so they employed the studio set designers to make inexpensive sets copying the ideas. I aimed to achieve musical complexity and intensity by layering the kind of music possibilities: leitmotifs,  harmonic sequences,  metric phasing, various kinds of improvising strategies.

Do you think one of the message of this movie is "the madness is right" ? And did you have any difficulties to write a music for the end of the movie which is more special and always expressionist ?
Since I believe that the interpretation of madness was a pragmatic device to undermine the political nature of the film, it added a duplicitous level which mirrored my musical choices. The most difficult part to score was a five minute flashback sequence. It is very non-linear and has few subtitles. Because of this, I had to use collage technique to musically reflect the visual and narrative complexity. I can imagine a contemporary remake of this film, which I'd love to see, imagine set in America.

Do you have, at the start of the project, the idea to work with Denman and Dave ? Could you speak to us about their power of adaptation for this movie ? and what was your ideas to use at is best the vocabularies of these both musicians ?
Yes I intended to work with Denman and Dave from the beginning. I know no two more versatile and original musicians. Particularly Denman Maroney's hyperpiano style is inherently expressionistic. His ability to alter the pitch,  timbre, and rhythm of the piano by playing "inside" the piano with one hand combined with his other hand playing the keyboard gave me a lot of musical options. I even went so far as to give Denman a copy of the film. He recorded an improvised rendering with the film. I got ideas from his improvised textures layered upon my notated music. Dave Douglas, too,  has a very broad musical range and can reference many musical moods and styles in an instant. His array of trumpet sounds and understanding of music of the Jazz Age &  Kurt Weil was a perfect vehicle for my music. As I mentioned I did a lot of improvising & tape recording with the film. I learned in making this score that it wasn't necessary or preferable to always write for everyone. It was better in fact sometimes to compose for two of us and have the third improvise a different level.

For "Eye'll Be Seeing you" you choose to work on the two movies Un Chien Andalou and A propos de Nice. These movies are the first as director for Luis Bunuel and Jean Vigo. But these movies aren't the well-known of the both. How and why did you choose these movies ?
When starting this project I knew I wanted to work with Anthony Coleman, who besides being a wonderful musician is also quite knowledgeable about film. He turned me on to a lot of wonderful films that I had previously not known. . We viewed many films together and finally decided to pair these two, because they were complimentary. In fact some of the critical writing about "Un Chien Andalou" had been written by Vigo. Anthony knew all about Vigo, had seen everything. . I hadn't known Vigo's work prior to this time. The Bunuel, in comparison was well known besides being unforgettable.. Its popularity certainly helped in the booking of a tour, which was certainly a consideration.

Un chien Andalou is a movie which allows him to approach the surrealist circle (people like Man Ray, Aragon, Cocteau, Breton.). It is a special movie with a lot of ideas on death, the compulsive desire to see... So it is a movie which improves imagination. How did you approach this project ? and was it easy for you to underline the different aspects of the movie ?
Perhaps naively, I didn't research the film in relationship to the whole surrealist movement, but rather, I viewed it more as Bunuel's and Dali's take on the propositions of Freud as well as the mood of the times coming after World War I:   the unconscious, the dream state, sexual archetypes,  authority as represented by man and the church, and anti romanticism. I took cues from the Bunuel's setting of Wagner's Tristan and the unidentified tango which he added to the film in the 60's.  I aimed to write music that both created an emotional counterpoint as well as illustrate quirky details. I aimed at following the shape of the film.

Could you speak to us about your project with silent movies ?
My current work with silent film/video is collaborative work with two living artists. In the case of digital artist, Tom Leeser, he took the tapes of two different pieces and created videos for them. The first collaboration based on water imagery was "Subtonium." This abstract, non narrative work is a collaboration with Tom's wife, the celebrated sculptor, Alison Saar. Together they call themselves the Kunst Brothers. The idea of Subtonium was to make a video that went with the music, period. They had heard us perform the music  in LA in 2000 and asked if they could make a video  to it. I agreed, with the understanding that we'd also like to perform live with  it.  In other words the live performance aspect was an afterthought. This is opposite the way music and film and music usually  go together. In a way this was more like an abstract expressionist  M TV rendering.. The second piece, "Sonomatopoeia" was also based on water  imagery. Musically it is a much more complex form. Similarly he had a tape and a score of the music to which he constructed his piece, but instead of solely making a visual analogue to the music, Tom intended to make a visual score. This piece is much more interactive and the first five minutes, has no music at all. We discussed in great detail the imagery behind the sounds.  I'm very pleased with the beautiful and evocative work he created. I believe it really improves the experience of the music. My collaboration with animator Sarah Jane Lapp is very different. We decided to work together, and I had a deadline. She had an idea for a piece called "Chronicles of an Asthmatic Stripper." She sent me a storyboard of the structure. I started sketching leit motifs, with the idea that my trio would perform it. As things developed, the dramatic line of the video changed, and when it was finally assembled, my music didn't fit the dimensions of the animation. I decided that I'd make it a solo bass piece, instead. I used some of the original materials, but I edited away a lot and improvised really precise transitions.  It's worth mentioning that animation is so different than making video. For this five minute piece, she created over 1500 hand drawings. It was filmed frame by frame on acetate. This is really old technology. Sarah Jane's piece is really charming, poignant and funny. The relation of the music and film is much more precise  in its timing, because it's narrative and also humorous. I feel blessed to work with these generous and gifted artists. Collaboration is a process that I truly enjoy.

Propos recueillis par Sébastien Moig