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Grant Simpson first got introduced to the world of silent movies as a working musician in a vaudeville show in Dawson City, Yukon when he was just 19 years old.
“I was playing the show at night,” he recalls, “and during the day, in the museum, they had an old-time piano player there, playing piano for silent movies in the museum. I just loved the idea of it at the time.”
Now, Simpson, along with several of his regular collaborators, are getting ready to recapture that magic with the first-ever Winnipeg Silent Movie Festival in Osborne Village this weekend. Although Simpson and his friends have scored silent movies before, this will mark the first time that they will take on a project of this scale.
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Improvising an auditory experience
Armed with the films of early-20th century stars such as Abbott & Costello and Buster Keaton, Simpson and his fellow musicians are going into the project with the intention to complete improvise the scores for the films without any prior direction.
“It’s a totally experimental improv collective of musicians, and they’re going to tackle three shorts,” says Simpson, adding that the moods of these films range from the stereotypical slapstick to darker, more moody films as well. “They’re not always just like, ‘Go watch somebody get a pie in the face.’”
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Despite the range of emotions in the films, Simpson says that the musicians that are assembled have already had a great time preparing for the festival. “It’s a challenge, as you might imagine, to improvise together while watching a narrative film – you have to kind of figure out how you’re going to do that together,” he says, “so that’s been a real fun process for us musically, and I think we’ve got quite good at it.”
Film scores formed by friends
The lack of direct preparation for the films does not mean that the groups are not ready for the challenge. Simpson says that many of them have collaborated and improvised together for some time, and that this familiarity will be a key skill that the players will lean on as they create the sonic mood of the films together.
Simpson says that the because of the relationships that already exist between the players, no one intends to make a facsimile of what a soundtrack from the silent movie era would have sounded like. “I used to do that when I started off – tried to sort of play what I though happened in 19900 when they were playing for these movies,” he says, “but since then, I’ve focused more on just playing my style, but to accomplish the same goal as they accomplished back then.”
“I try not to just make it a museum piece. I try to make it a living thing today, just embracing the actual tradition.”
The inaugural Winnipeg Silent Movie Festival is being held at the Crescent Arts Centre on Wardlaw Avenue in Osborne Village from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. on April 18. More information can be found at the event’s social media page.
