Sound of Silent Film with SIFF and Access Contemporary Music
SMO partners with Access Contemporary Music (Chicago/New York) and the Seattle International Film Festival to present an evening of live contemporary music alongside new films at the historic SIFF Cinema Egyptian. These short silent films are from every conceivable genre: comedy, drama, horror, dance, and animated. With seven SMO musicians and conductor Julia Tai, this unique cinematic experience features films sourced from a global call for submissions.
PROGRAM:
OREN BONEH: Marquee (2020) – Film by Brian Zahm
NATASHA BOGOJEVICH: Ephemeral Orphanage (2023) – Film by Lisa Barcy
PERI MAUER: Lightmare (2023) – Film by Josh Drake
JONATHAN RUSSELL: Demons for Breakfast (2023) – Film by Lauren McCune
TREVOR PATRICIA WATKIN: Frames (2023) – Film by Farhad Pakdel
LYNN BECHTOLD: What If (2020) – Film by Winnie Cheung
LYNN BECHTOLD: Landmine of Mine (2024) – Film by Kevin T. Landry
LEDAH FINCK: Falling for Greta (2024) – Film by Gustavo Arteaga
SETH BOUSTEAD: The Heart of the World (2024) – Film by Guy Maddin
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Individual tickets to this show available at a later date
ABOUT THE COMPOSERS:
Composer Oren Boneh writes music characterized by its energy and dynamism. Its foundation is made up of vastly contrasting characters, ranging from abrasive and mechanical to humorous and supple. As described by Le Monde, his works are distinguished by a “constant tension between two opposing poles – one civilized and the other savage.” The music plays with listener expectations of the characters’ behaviors in order to create unpredictability and friction.
Oren has been commissioned and performed internationally by ensembles such as Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Proton Bern, Vertixe Sonora, Alarm Will Sound, Quatuor Tana, Ensemble Meitar, Loadbang, Ensemble Fractales, the Divertimento Ensemble, and the New York New Music Ensemble, and at festivals such as Festival ManiFeste (FR), Impuls (AT), and Images Sonores (BE). Oren also works frequently with artists from other disciplines: his hour-long work, La Voix du Trait, is a collaboration with calligrapher Frank Lalou; he collaborated with choreographer Ayelen Parolin on her new work With (2021), which toured across Europe, and worked with art students at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in collaboration with IRCAM to create two installations/performances as part of the exhibition Orbital Orchestra at Festival ManiFeste 2021.
At the moment, Oren is working on a new 40-minute work for Ensemble Intercontemporain and electronics in collaboration with IRCAM to be premiered in February 2025. Recent projects include a concerto for Richard Haynes (clarinet) and Ensemble Proton Bern, a work for Klangforum Wien commissioned by impuls in Graz, and most recently premiered in March 2024, La Voix du Trait, an hour of music for Ensemble Fractales and electronics with live calligraphy.
First Prize winner of the 2017 Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award Competition for his piece, Winter Walks that Gravel my Voice, Oren has been selected in numerous other competitions such as the Impuls International Composition Competition, Franco Donatoni International Competition, the ASCAP Morton Gould Awards, the Loadbang Commission Competition, and Protonwerk. Oren has been a composer fellow at the Missouri International Composers Festival, Cultivate at the Copland House, Soundstreams, Tzlil Meudcan, CEME, Festival Mixtur, UC Davis Revision/s, and at the Millay Colony for the Arts, the Visby International Centre for Composers and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts.
Oren is currently based in Brussels. He received the George Ladd Prix de Paris to complete the IRCAM Cursus in Paris in 2019-20. Oren completed his PhD in composition at the University of California, Berkeley where he worked with Franck Bedrossian and Edmund Campion. Supported by a Fulbright fellowship during the 2015-2016 year, Oren worked in Dresden, Germany studying composition and working at the Dresden Music Cognition Lab. Oren has previously studied at McGill University with Brian Cherney and Philippe Leroux, the Royal Danish Academy of Music with Hans Abrahamsen and Juliana Hodkinson, and the University of Denver with Chris Malloy and William Hill.
Oren’s scores are published by Babel Scores and qPress and he is a member of the Forum des Compositeurs in Belgium. Oren is the artistic coordinator of Ensemble Fractales in Brussels.
Natasha Bogojevich studied composition in Belgrade with Srdjan Hofman, graduated with a thesis on nonlinear time in music composition for symphony orchestra titled Circulus vitiosus. She also studied piano, chamber, electronic and computer music with Vladan Radovanovic and Neil Rolnick at the Radio Belgrade Electronic Studio and attended Master Classes for Film Music with Ennio Simeon. Her musical background consists of various interrelated activities in the area of traditional and electronic music, multimedia, performance art and sound design for visual media (theater, film, TV and commercials).
Ms. Bogojevich is a former Assistant Professor of composition at the University of Music in Belgrade. She was also a collaborator in Belgrade TV – Cultural Production. Since 2003, Natasha has been on the faculty of DePaul University, where she teaches the courses Understanding Music and Intro to Composition.
Natasha’s compositions include works for symphony orchestra, solo instruments, chamber ensembles, choral and vocal pieces, electronic and computer music, ballet and numerous scores for film and stage music. She is the recipient of many awards for composition in former Yugoslavia (October Prize of the City of Belgrade, Josip Slavenski, Radio Belgrade, Association of Composers of Serbia) Awarded the top prize at the UNESCO’s Rostrum of Composers in Paris, her chamber composition Formes différentes de Sonneries de la Rose+Croix was broadcast throughout the world. Most recently her new works premiered by the New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Versus Vox Ensemble, Amarone String Quartet and Demetrius Spaneas who commissioned a piece for woodwinds, electronic and film to present during his year long Euro-Asian tour.
In October/November 2007 Natasha’s music was presented at the prestigious Belgrade Music Festival, The Long Night of Chamber Music 190 Years of Brandenburger Theatre in Brandenburg and Berlin, Versicherungskammer Bayernin in Munich, AmBul Festival in Sofia and International Rostrum of Composers. She also composed original music for Chicago Theatre Productions (Chopin Theatre, The Utopian Theatre Asylum, BackStage Theatre Co. etc.) and written original scores for indie feature films “Where It Gets You” and “Black Mail” which premiered in 2008.
Native New Yorker Peri Mauer has written works for solo instruments, chamber ensembles, orchestra, and theater. Her music has received performances in Bargemusic’s Here and Now Winter and Labor Day Festivals, Women Composers Festival of Hartford, Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music in Bowdoin, ME, Concrete Timbre New Music Series, Music With A View Festival at the Flea Theater for which she also served as cellist and conductor, Composers Concordance Composers Play Composers Festival, New York Composers Circle Concerts of New Music, among many others. She is the recipient of ASCAP Plus Awards, commissions to write orchestral works for the New York Repertory Orchestra, Jackson Heights Orchestra, and LaGuardia High School Symphonic Band, and was honored to be a featured composer in the 2017 Composers Now Festival. Her music has been played in Marvin Rosen’s award winning Classical Discoveries radio program, broadcast from the studios of WPRB Princeton NJ. She holds degrees from Manhattan School of Music and Bard College, and attended LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (the “Fame” school). Scholastic awards include a National Collegiate Music Prize and membership into Pi Kappa Lambda, the National Honor Society of Music. Also a professional cellist, she has worked with such groups as American Symphony Orchestra, Encompass New Opera Theater, Radio City Music Hall Orchestra, Darmstadt Ensemble, NYU Contemporary Players, American Chamber Opera, Manhattan Chamber Players, Playwrights Horizons, to name just a few, and can be seen playing her cello in the Golden Globe and Creative Arts Emmy Award winning Amazon TV series Mozart in the Jungle.
Jonathan Russell (b. 1979) creates music by turns tender and fierce, playful and profound, raw and refined, propulsive and still. In his work, he seeks to embody and express the full range of human experience in a way that speaks directly to people’s hearts, minds, and bodies.
While he composes for all sorts of instruments, the extraordinary sound and spirit of the bass clarinet in particular is a driving force behind much of his work. His numerous compositions for bass clarinet(s) include solo works, sonatas, concertos, duets, trios, quartets, chamber works, and large bass clarinet ensembles. He was a longtime member of the Edmund Welles bass clarinet quartet, which channeled the ecstatic power of heavy metal through the deep acoustical resonances of four bass clarinets. He is a member, with Jeff Anderle, of the Sqwonk bass clarinet duo, which for the past 15 years has devoted itself to creating a new repertoire of expressive, vital, joyous music for two bass clarinets. He is also the founder and leader of Improbable Beasts, a professional 15-member bass clarinet ensemble in the Boston area. This group represents the culmination of Jonathan’s bass clarinet journey, allowing him to fully realize the richly-textured, harmonious, ferocious music of his dreams.
Trevor Patricia Watkin is named after his grandmother, a fellow native of Southern California. Although at various times he has called both Boulder County, Colorado and — for the past 16 years — Chicago home, he is looking forward to returning to San Diego for good.
A teacher since 1997, from 2013-2022 Trevor taught at Access Contemporary Music in Chicago, where he served first as Director of Operations and ultimately as Director of Artistic Activities. While there, he maintained a large studio with students in flute, voice, composition, and piano. In 2019 he created the ACM Film Scoring Class, which is the only film scoring class in the country designed for secondary-aged students also given the opportunity to score for live, professional musicians for a public performance. Trevor conducted Seth Boustead’s score for the film Dreaming Grand Avenue, produced by the Newcity Chicago Film Project, and the Sound of Silent Film Festival, produced by Access Contemporary Music, at the 2020 and 2022 Thirsty Ears Street Festivals. The Sound of Silent Film Festival also commissioned from him the premieres of five new scores for the films Liminal, My Son Thomas, Blackout Roulette, Frames, and Escape.
Trevor is a past recipient of the Joseph Jefferson Award for his score for the silent stage production The Black Duckling. He is also a past winner of the Houghton College Sacred Choral Composition Competition for his a cappella work Lullay, Mine Liking, written for the original cast of The Right Brain Project’s production of Stephen Gawrit’s Hammer. Recent performances include a multi-state tour of his program Drag It Through the Garden, featuring works exclusively by Chicago Composers, at which he and pianist Peter Friesen gave the world premieres of Ezra Shuminas’s Andrew’s Theme and the final movement of Seth Boustead’s Sonata for Flute and Piano. An ardent supporter of living composers, upcoming commissions include new works for flute and piano by Tatev Amiryan, William Jason Raynovich, and Regina Harris Baiocchi.
A past student of both Point Loma Nazarene University and University of Colorado at Boulder, Trevor has studied flute with Lory Lacy, Barbara Mullens Geier, Jill Coady, and Elizabeth McNutt; and composition with Phillip Keveren and Richard Toensing.
Violinist/composer Lynn Bechtold, a native of Pittsburgh, has appeared in recital throughout the U.S., Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, and Switzerland. An advocate of new music, she has worked with composers such as Derek Bermel, Carter Burwell, Gloria Coates, George Crumb, Beatriz Ferreyra, John Harbison, and Morton Subotnick, and has premiered works on the Tribeca New Music Festival and the Princeton Composers’ Series. In 2001, she gave the premiere of Violynn, a work for violin and electronics written for her by Alvin Lucier. All About Jazz noted her for her “virtuosity and technical expertise,” I CARE IF YOU LISTEN pointed out her “brilliance of sound, technical mastery, and stunning expressivity,” San Diego Story called her “unapologetically dominating,” and Strings Magazine labeled her “impressive” and “close to the edge.”
She performs in groups including Miolina, Missing Link Ensemble, the SEM Ensemble, CompCord Ensemble, and N/S Consonance. Past groups include Zentripetal, Bleecker StQ, Quartet Metadata, Tenth Intervention, and NineLive. Other performances have been with Absolute Ensemble, Alison Cook Beatty Dance, Bleecker StQ, DJ Spooky, East Village Opera Company, Emily Johnson/Catalyst Dance, EnterArt, disco band Escort, Eternal Tango Orchestra, Glass Farm Ensemble, Lumina String Quartet, NY Symphonic Ensemble, Parsons Dance, Paul Taylor Dance Company, 10 Hairy Legs, Vermont Symphony, VisionIntoArt, VOX Opera Readings, and Pablo Ziegler. She has also performed with entertainers such as Boyz II Men, Sarah Brightman, Michael Bublé, Willie Colon, Sheryl Crow, Dead Can Dance, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society Band, Roberta Flack, Josh Groban, Cyndi Lauper, Left Banke, Smokey Robinson, J-Pop band SMAP, Donna Summer, Suzanne Vega, and Stevie Wonder. In a work by artist Derrick Adams, she was part of Performa ’13, the performance art biennial. Busy as a concert producer as well, she co-directs Ladies First, a concert series highlighting female diversity in music and other fields.
An active performer, she has played at diverse venues such as the Blue Note, Bowery Ballroom, Carnegie Hall, Citi Field, the Frick Museum, the Harvard Club, Joe’s Pub, Lincoln Center, Madison Square Garden, Merkin Hall, MoMA, National Sawdust, nublu, le Poisson Rouge, Radio City Music Hall, the Smithsonian, St. John the Divine, and The Whitney Museum. Radio/TV broadcasts include CBC, NHK, WKCR, WNYC, CBS Morning Show, Good Day NY, 30 Rock, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She composes electroacoustic works, and writes news articles about food/music/life, when time allows. Her compositions have been performed on various series and festivals, including Access Contemporary Music, Birmingham New Music Festival, Circuit Bridges, Composers Concordance, COMPOSERSFest XIII, Composers Voice, JUMP, La Cupula Galeria de Arte Livestream Series, Music With a View, NWEAMO, Relevant Tones, Soft Series, Sonic Circuits Festival, Sound of Silent Film Festival, and Sound Traffic, and at venues such as the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC, Bohemian National Hall, Fundación Beethoven in Buenos Aires, Institut Finlandais in Paris, National Opera Center, Nordia House in Portland, and Universidad Nacional in Córdoba. Her works have been performed by performers such as CompCord Ensemble, EnterArt Dance, Miolina, Missing Link Ensemble, The Overlook Quartet, Two Sides Sounding, cellist Anja Wood, and Zentripetal. As a composer, she has collaborated with artist Cecilia Mandrile, with chef Kurt Gutenbrunner, and with tap dancer Max Pollak. In 2023, she was in residence at Alfred University’s Institute for Electronic Arts.
Ledah Finck is a violinist, violist, improviser, and composer who resides in NYC. A passionate creator, performer, and curator of contemporary classical music, she is a member of the contemporary-music quartet Bergamot Quartet, the 2020-2022 Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the New School. Her pursuit of contemporary music is strongly supplemented by performing and collaborating in other genres such as Jazz Manouche, Appalachian and Celtic folk, and experimental music. Compositional projects include commissions by Imani Winds, Ayane and Paul, Alarm Will Sound/Now Hear This, the Bridge Ensemble, The Peabody Community Chorus, and a work for the Bergamot Quartet and percussionist Terry Sweeney that is the title track for Bergamot’s debut album, In the Brink. Her solo albums “Mayfly” and “Outside Songs” can be heard on Bandcamp.com.
Seth Boustead is a composer, radio host, arts manager and writer, concert producer, in-demand speaker and visionary with the goal of revolutionizing how and where classical music is performed and how it is perceived by the general public. He received his Master of Music Composition degree from the Chicago College for the Performing Arts in 2002 and has gone on to forge a unique and highly personal musical identity through a prolific outpouring of works in every conceivable genre. His music is regularly performed across the United States and in Europe and has been heard on radio and television stations in Chicago, San Francisco, New York and Paris among others.
In 2017 Seth’s piano concerto was premiered to acclaim by the Chicago Composers Orchestra with Marta Aznavoorian as soloist and his piece Group Dance was recently aired on Performance Today, the country’s most-heard syndicated classical music radio program. He is currently working on a sprawling chamber piece inspired by the 1960’s art movement the Hairy Who to be performed later this year as part of Art Design Chicago. The New York Times called Seth’s music “lyrical and full of whimsy” while the A/V club said “Boustead has a penchant for writing dark, angsty scores.”
Seth is the founder and Executive Director of Access Contemporary Music, an organization that exists to present classical music as a living art form by performing new works in innovative ways for new audiences, providing community-based music education focused on creativity, and commissioning projects with composers from around the world. ACM began when Seth started the now-legendary Weekly Readings program in which he and other musicians met every week to read through, record and post pieces by living composers every week. Weekly Readings ran for six years and attracted major press including the NewMusicBox, Chamber Music Today and the Chicago Sun-Times.
Chicago Classical Review has named Seth “one of our most creative concert programmer/producers,” with more than a hundred production credits that include concerts like Sounds from the Floating World, Gnarly Buttons: John Adams at 65 and Into the Mystic just to name a few, collaborative events like Ten x Ten pairing ten visual artists with ten composers, Songs About Buildings and Moods and the Sound of Silent Film Festival.
Seth has shared his passion for contemporary classical music with radio listeners through his show Relevant Tones since 2005, first on Loyola University’s WLUW and, since 2011, on WFMT, Chicago’s classical music station. In January 2014 Relevant Tones syndicated internationally, bringing it to an estimated 200,000 listeners each week throughout the U.S. New Zealand, Canada and the Philippines. It is also available as a Podcast and each of the more than 200 episodes can be streamed at relevanttones.com.
Always interested in innovation, Seth created the Thirsty Ears Festival, Chicago’s only classical music street festival, to showcase the stunning diversity happening in classical music today and to spotlight talented ensembles and soloists. Held the second weekend of August, the Thirsty Ears Festival attracts thousands of people and features two days of live performances, wine, beer and other vendors, food trucks and kid-friendly activities.
A passionate advocate of silent film, Seth started the Sound of Silent Film Festival in 2005 featuring newly commissioned music performed live to modern silent films. Now in its twelfth year, the Sound of Silent Film Festival receives submissions from filmmakers in 30 plus countries and has featured World Premiere screenings of films from Iran, Argentina, Finland and Korea. The festival regularly sells out Chicago’s Music Box Theater and has had successful runs in New York, Austin and Mexico City as well.
Seth has been interviewed by or had writings appear in a wide variety of publications including the New York Times, Chicago Magazine, Time Out Chicago, Composition Today, New Music Box of the American Music Center and Chamber Music Magazine. He has been a guest on radio and television shows including Chicago Tonight on WTTW, 848, Morning Edition and Afternoon Shift on Chicago Public Radio, Sunday Papers on WGN, Movies on the Radio on WQXR in New York and many more.
Seth currently lives in Brooklyn. More information about Seth can be found at sethboustead.com
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS:
Brian Zahm is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited worldwide and locally at Chicago International Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival and Chicagoland Shorts: Volume 2. Riding the analog-to-digital wave for over thirty years, he works in narrative, documentary and experimental filmmaking, performs and produces electronic music, indulges in photography and graphic design, and enjoys writing “fast-food” fiction. Having spent much of his career working in the commercial film and media industry, over the past several years his reputation has grown as a prolific outsider artist due to bold and diverse stylistic explorations with such films as “Photosynthesis,” “Choc,” “Monochromatic Dreams,” “Stinger,” “Catatonic,” “(Just) Balloons,” “Mugshot,” “A.i. Movie,” “Audition For Death,” “Le Nu,” “Pleasant Valley Drive In” and “Signal.” No matter what artistic direction, he strives to create a timeless, unforgettable experience through his work, this aim cemented with the experimental documentary feature “Headspace: The Sound of Life,” for which he was the writer, cinematographer and editor—the film called “visionary” by The New York Times.
He puts his career in education, and the opportunity to mentor students, above all else. A true career highlight was the unique opportunity to take his educational and professional production skills to Guyana, South America where he was tasked to help bring a narrative film industry to the country as part of a grant from Higher Education for Development (H.E.D.) and USAID, this project called The President’s Film Endowment. Over the course of four months, he taught all phases of cinema production to 180 students, ages 18-65, who had little-to-no film experience. With this newfound knowledge along with modest production equipment and resources, the students created eight short narrative films featuring Guyanese culture and formed a film collective known as CineGuyana. Ultimately these films went to film festivals worldwide and eventually were shown at The American Film Institute.
At DePaul School of Cinematic Arts, his efforts have been focused on building the Experimental Film Program through a growing array of classes, designing the Experimental Film Minor, founding/producing D.E.F. Showcase (DePaul Experimental Film Showcase that happens annually at DePaul Art Museum), establishing the DePaul Experimental Film Club and helping his students exhibit work at film festivals and galleries worldwide.
Lisa Barcy makes animated films, collages, artist books, and sculptural oddities. Her animated work has appeared in numerous film festivals both in the U.S. and abroad. She teaches at DePaul University in Chicago. More of her work can be seen on Vimeo at vimeo.com/lisabarcy and at lisabarcy.tumblr.com.
Josh Drake is a filmmaker who works primarily with super 8 and 16mm film. His latest works include Across the Whipplewash (vimeo.com/66530181), a 16 minute silent-movie-style western, and The Ceiling (http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2013/05/jacques-cousteau-stars-in-an-undersea-music-video/276021/), a music video for Yellowbirds. He has a bachelor’s degree in film and places a strong emphasis on film history and film languages. His other interests include making sharpie portraits (joshdrakeart.blogspot.com).
Lauren McCune has produced short films such as Frank Mosley’s Parthenon (Slamdance, Maryland FF, Sarasota FF, Cucalorus) and Tyler Rubenfeld’s Innards (BAMcinemafest, Chicago International FF). She has made music videos for artists such as Brent Cowles, Julia Weldon, The Stationary Set, The Still Tide, Alyssa Robbins, Pardis Sabeti, Paul Harlan, and I Am Snow Angel. She was a featured artist at the 2014 Brooklyn Music Video Festival. Lauren McCune has also acted in Ready for Love, Her Wilderness (Sidewalk Moving Picture FF, Kinoscope Film Series, Edinburgh Art Festival), Satisfaction, and Killing the Dog.
Farhad Pakdel is a filmmaker based in Montreal whose work explores identity (de)construction, liminality, posthumanism, absence, place and memory. He holds a master’s in film from York University in Toronto and a master’s in cinema from the University of Art in Tehran. He has directed, written, and produced several short films that have been exhibited at international festivals. Farhad is a member of Iran’s National Elites Foundation. He has taught film courses, English language, and the history of philosophy.
Originally from Hong Kong, Winnie Cheung is a globetrotting musician, dancer, and filmmaker holding a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Chicago and Masters and Doctorate from the Eastman School of Music in Piano and Music Composition. She taught classes in music composition, theory, piano, choir, and music appreciation from ages 5 to 95 in Canada/USA until tango found her.
Kevin T. Landry is a Canadian with a bachelor’s degree in communications with focus in cinema from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Landry began specializing in post-production before venturing into direction and screenwriting. He directed short films like Robeth (2016) and Sang Papier (2017), in addition to the collective feature Première Vagues (2021).
Gustavo Arteaga is the creator of award winning films and flops. Animation MA; UWN (U.K). Trained on the job at the BolexBrothers Studio (Bristol) and Nukufilms Studio (Tallinn). Mexican born, living in Wales. Teaching Stop-mo at USW (Cardiff). Currently producing two animation projects for 2025. His 2023 film “FALLING FOR GRETA” is being screened at these places.
Guy Maddin is a writer, visual artist, and award-winning filmmaker who has directed 12 feature-length films, including THE GREEN FOG (2018), THE FORBIDDEN ROOM (2015), MY WINNIPEG (2007), and THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD (2003), as well as innumerable shorts. Additionally, he has produced over seventy performances around the world of his films each featuring live elements such as orchestra, sound effects, singing, and narration.
THE GREEN FOG won the LA Film Critics Association prize for Best Experimental Film of 2018. Twice Maddin has won America’s National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Experimental Film, with ARCHANGEL (1991) and THE HEART OF THE WORLD (2001). He has been bestowed many other awards, including the Telluride Silver Medal in 1995, the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Persistence of Vision Award in 2006, and an Emmy for his ballet film DRACULA: PAGES FROM A VIRGIN’S DIARY (2002).