Gary Lucas   Vampyr  








After receiving a standing ovation for Gary's performance of his live score for Dreyer's "Vampyr" at Proctors Theatre Schenectady 11/13/15


"Don't Fear the Reaper" Gary Lucas performs his live score accompanying "Vampyr", Proctors Theatre Schenectady Fri. the 13th 2015
photo by Scott Redstone


Gary performs "Vampyr" before 200 souls at Proctors Theatre Schenectady Fri. the 13th 2015
photo by Scott Redstone

 
On Nov. 1st 2014, GARY LUCAS performed the world premiere of his new live solo guitar score accompanying Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer's 1932 masterpiece of the macabre "VAMPYR" at the American Film Institute Silver Theater in Silver Spring Maryland.
Read a review of the performance here!

Check out a clip with Gary Lucas' new score on the soundtrack below!

AFI director of programming Todd Hitchcock on Gary's new live score for "Vampyr":

"Gary Lucas’s dreamy, ethereal guitar score for VAMPYR greatly complimented Carl Theodor Dreyer’s visionary 1932 masterpiece—a film even more spell-binding when given the full silent treatment, opting for more expressive musical accompaniment and setting aside the few passages of dialogue that occur (though these were still legible as translated subtitles). The film’s eeriness and mystery were well-matched to Lucas’s nimble playing, as were the inventively disorienting visuals by cinematographer Rudolph Maté."

This follows on the heels of his celebrated score for the legendary Spanish-language "Dracula" (1931, d. George Melford) with which Gary has toured all over the world, including high profile appearances at the NY Film Festival, Sevilla Film Festival, Transylvania Film Festival, and Havana Film Festival.

VAMPYR, based on ghostly tales by Irish author J. Sheridan Lefanu, occupies a singular niche in the horror cinema, occupying its own peculiar space somewhere between a silent surrealist film and a sound film thriller. A German-French co-production filmed in France, dialogue is kept to a minimum and the film unfolds its convoluted narrative mainly through the use of gestures and subtitles. Dreamy, phantasmagoric soft-focus cinematography and unusual editing rhythms and camera angles dislocate the viewer's sense of time and space throughout—and nothing truly is just what it seems. French aristocrat (and "Vampyr" backer) Nicolas de Gunzberg plays Julian West, a lost soul out of time and space, who wanders one night into the village of Courtempierre, only to discover a sinister secret lurking in the shadows of the old cathedral, evidence of—

well, you will just have to see it for yourself :-)  

With Sybille Schmitz, Rena Mandel and Henriette Gerard.

Gary at Proctors Theatre Schenectaday performing his score for "Vampyr", Fri. the 13th 2015