Director Behn Zeitlin’s acclaimed film Beasts of the Southern Wild will be screened with live accompaniment by the Wordless Music Orchestra and the Lost Bayou Ramblers under Ryan McAdams Jan. 23 and 24 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space in New York City.
This event has only happened once before in New York, but the score to this four-time, Oscar-nominated movie has taken a life of its own. In July, excerpts were performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel at the Hollywood Bowl, and the live score was performed to the complete film at the Barbican Arts Center in London. The Symphony Space performances will be the first live showings with the Grammy-nominated Lost Bayou Ramblers, who appear onscreen in the film. The soundtrack was composed by Zeitlin with Dan Romer and it will be performed to a music-less print of the film created especially for this project.
The soundtrack for Beasts of the Southern Wild was cited by Kyle Buchanan of New York magazine as “the year’s best score ... What Zeitlin and Romer have produced is a marvel: a swirling, magical score that channels the spirit of protagonist Hushpuppy, an indomitable 6-year-old girl (played by Quvenzhané Wallis) who lives in a semi-mythical, mostly flooded New Orleans town called the Bathtub.”
“Romer used a strong string section, a trumpet, and a temperamental, briefly rented celesta to put forth that point of view. ‘When we made the score, we just thought, What is Hushpuppy thinking about this situation? Let's make music that would reflect what she thinks about what's happening,’" he said. "‘If we tried to score it from anybody else's point of view other than Hushpuppy's, it fell flat.’”
The results have a contemporary yet timeless quality, with Michael Nyman, Danny Elfman and Kate Bush as reference points.
Tickets for this show can be purchased here.
Watch Zeitlin and Romer perform "Once There Was a Hush Puppy" below:
