After the overwhelming response to our first venture into film screenings with a live score last year, the People's Republic is thrilled to welcome back one of the world's great silent film composers with another extraordinary quartet to play his score to a silent film masterpiece from the 1920s...

Phillip Johnston, James Greening, Alister Spence and Casey Golden play

THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (1926)

SUNDAY July 13th at 7.30 p.m. [doors at 7]

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger and Carl Koch, 1926)

With original music by Phillip Johnston

Performed by  
Phillip Johnston: alto saxophone, composition
James Greening: trombone
Alister Spence: keyboards
Casey Golden: keyboards
 
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) is a silent silhouette animation by Lotte Reiniger, considered by many to be the first feature-length animated film. Influenced by Georges Méliès (Voyage dans la lune) and Paul Wegener (Der Golem), Reiniger had an astonishing facility with cutting - holding the scissors still in her right hand, and manipulating the paper at lightning speed with her left hand so that the cut always went in the right direction. She drew the storyboards and devised the plots and characters, which were closely linked. William Moritz describes it as “a brilliant feature, a wonderful film full of charming comedy, lyrical romance, vigorous and exciting battles, eerie magic, and truly sinister, frightening evil.”
 
Phillip Johnston's score for Prince Achmed again represents a unique approach to music for silent film. Combining electronic and acoustic instruments, the score is structured around a pre-recorded score of sampled electronic loops and percussion. Against this, a live band consisting of two keyboards, soprano saxophone and trombone performs the composed score, seasoned with elements of improvisation and invoking elements of jazz, blues, minimalism and classical music.
 
Taken from The Arabian Nights, The Adventure of Prince Achmed tells the story of a wicked sorcerer who tricks Prince Achmed into mounting a magical flying horse and sends the rider off on a flight to his death. But the prince foils the magician’s plan, and soars headlong into a series of wondrous adventures - joining forces with Aladdin and the Witch of the Fiery Mountains, doing battle with the sorcerer's army of monsters and demons, and falling in love with the beautiful Princess Peri Banu.
 
“While Johnston's and Reiniger’s compositions are each complex in their own ways, they come together simply and beautifully, stripping animation back to its abstract qualities of light, shadow, image and sound.”
–Anna Madeleine, The Guardian
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In addition to his work in jazz and improvised music, film scoring, theatre and multimedia Phillip Johnston has been composing original scores for silent film for over 30 years. His collaborators include John Zorn, Art Spiegelman, Richard Foreman, Chris Abrahams and Sandy Evans. The recent performance of his score for Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Page of Madness (1926) at The Red House played two shows to packed houses. Ken Winokur of the Alloy Orchestra wrote of his 2023 book, Silent Films/Loud Music “Johnston analyses silent film scores with the keen eye of someone who has created some of the seminal works in the field himself.”
 
James Greening has been a leading voice in the music scene in Sydney and Australia for more than forty years. Trombones, pocket trumpet, slide trumpet, tuba, sousaphone and diddly bow bass add to James' diversity as a performer. He is a founding member of seminal Australian bands such as Ten Part Invention, Wanderlust, the Catholics, the Umbrellas and the Australian Art Orchestra.  He was a close collaborator with Jackie Orszaczky and has played with the Mingus Big Band, Martha Wainwright, Lou Reed and Brian Wilson, among many others.
 
Pianist and composer Alister Spence is one of the leading lights in contemporary original jazz and improvised music in Australia.  The Alister Spence Trio has enjoyed critical acclaim both nationally and internationally, being nominated twice for Best Australian Jazz Album at the ARIA Awards (2004/2007).  He is also a founding member of Clarion Fracture Zone, Wanderlust and The Australian Art Orchestra, and has played with Satoko Fujii (Japan), Michiyo Yagi (Japan), Barre Phillips (US), Myra Melford (US), Joe Williamson (SWE), Jim O’Rourke (Japan), Sandy Evans, Chris Abrahams, Don Burrows, Tony Buck, Archie Roach and Ed Kuepper.
 
Casey Golden is described as ‘a brilliant improviser with a highly developed melodic sensibility’ (The Australian) and ‘a pianist of sheer class’ (Jazzwise). Besides his work in jazz and improvised music, Casey and his brother Beau Golden make up the future electronic/production duo This Week in the Universe. With a shared love for 1980s film music and vintage synths, their music has ranged from other-worldly instrumental sci-fi to collaborations with some of Australia’s leading pop artists.
 
More information about Prince Achmed HERE

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