RANDALL
WOOLF
–
WOMEN AT AN EXHIBITION
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Randall
Woolf: Women at an Exhibition (World Premiere, new version)
Video by Mary Harron and John C. Walsh
Randall Woolf is a "downtown" composer whose
compositions combine traditional orchestral instruments,
digital processing, electric guitar, electronic and
acoustic drumsets and text, creating a richly varied
and genre-bending fusion of elements both ancient and
futuristic. Women at an Exhibition was commissioned
by the Akron Art Museum. Woolf began planning the piece
by choosing works from the museum's collection. When
a friend observed that Woolf had chosen mostly images
of women, he decided to present his work as a constantly
shifting, open-ended statement about women&ldots;how
they are seen by men, by society, by each other, and
how they see themselves, without ever settling into
one point of view. Woolf then assembled a digital soundtrack
created from the sounds of women singing in diverse
genres, from country and western, to new wave rock,
to renaissance madrigals to accompany the orchestra.
ACO's performance marks the world premiere of a new
version of the piece for small orchestra.
Collaborating with Woolf in the creation of Women at
an Exhibition are filmmakers Mary Harron and John C.
Walsh, who produced a video that amplified and extended
Woolf's open-ended ideas about women's roles. "Randy
came to us with about two dozen images he liked from
the museum's collection, and asked that we edit them
to his score. We began and proceeded on a strictly intuitive
basis. We played with juxtaposing different images,
doing varied camera moves on them. What became the content
of the shot depended on the particular camera movement
and the extent to which the image was obvious from the
outset or revealed slowly by pulling out. We tried to
let the mood and tempo of the score be our guide,"
says Walsh.
Woolf first met husband and wife team, Mary Harron and
John C. Walsh, while working on the score to Harron's
American Psycho, a film based on Bret Easton Ellis's
controversial novel. That project, released in 2000,
quickly became a cult-classic-a vision of 1980's American
culture, depicting urban life through the eyes of a
wealthy young serial killer. Harron studied English
literature at Oxford and began her career as a rock
journalist during the punk era. During the 1980's she
worked in British television and directed short films
and documentaries for the BBC. In the early 1990's she
moved to New York and attracted major critical acclaim
with her first feature film, I Shot Andy Warhol, released
in 1996. Harron is currently finishing a film for HBO
about the 1950's pinup girl Bettie Page. Walsh premiered
his first film, Ed's Next Move, at the Sundance Film
Festival in 1996. Walsh's second feature, Pipe Dream
was released in 2002, starring Mary-Louise Parker. His
latest project is a film starring Sigourney Weaver entitled
Due Date.
"Women at an Exhibition" was commissioned
by the Akron Art Museum and premiered by the Akron Symphony
Orchestra with support from Continental Harmony, which
links communities with composers through the creation
of original musical works. The program is a partnership
of American Composers Forum and The National Endowment
for the Arts, with funds provided by the John S. and
James L. Knight Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation
and additional support from the Target Foundation. The
Akron Art Museum's project was made possible by the
Mirapaul Foundation, the Akron Art Museum Acquisition
Fund and Mrs. Cynthia Knight.
To contact the American Composers Orchestra, E-mail
Michael Geller at:
michael@americancomposers.org
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