Since 2008, Tom Peters has created 16 new scores for Nosferatu, The Man with the Movie Camera, The Cat and the Canary, Pandora’s Box, Borderline, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Alfred Hitchcock’s first big success), Der Golem and Chicago, among others. His score for The Passion of Joan of Arc premiered at the 2013 Toronto Silent Film Festival with acclaimed viola da gambist Joelle Morton. The Iron Horse premiered at The Autry in 2015, and The Man with the Movie Camera premiered at the Portland Art Museum in 2016. His performance tools include a bowed NS Design Arpeggione designed by the legendary Ned Steinberger and laptop computer with Ableton Live. He creates computer-synchronized soundscapes that may include anything from voices to drums to ukuleles and performs the score live with composed and improvisational elements to create a truly unique sight and sound experience.
PARTICIPATION
As his work has evolved over the years, Tom Peters noticed that nearly every composition he has written uses films, songs, and texts of the past. Speaking of Which… uses mid-Century spoken word albums—mostly found at thrift stores—as the source material for music that will be assembled live during SoundPedro 2018
Source materials for Speaking of Which… may include Becoming the Sensuous Woman (1969), Teaching Your Parrot to Talk (1976), Quitting Smoking through Hypnosis (1965), and How to Make a Fortune in Real Estate with Only $400 (1948).
“The Man with the Movie Camera” is Dziga Vertov’s landmark of classic Russian avant-garde cinema which was declared to be the greatest documentary of all time by Sight and Sound Magazine. Shot over 3 years in Moscow, Kiev and St. Petersburg, the film depicts 24 hours in the life of a typical Russian city through stunning jump cuts and montages as it captures “life caught unawares.” Peters premiered this score in 2016 during the Northwest Film Center’s Reel Music Festival at the Portland Art Museum. It has not been performed locally.