August Frank/Inland 360
Ruby Fulton, Liam Marchant, Dylan Champagne and Kenworthy Executive Director Colin Mannex are shown in front of the Kenworthy marquee.Fulton, Marchant and Champagne composed the music for different films featured in the theater's new Silent Film Festival.
A new series at Moscow’s Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre infuses an old art form with new vigor while celebrating the origins of the 1920s-era theater.
The Silent Film Festival pairs live music by a local composer with a classic movie at 7 p.m. each Thursday in May.
“As soon as something gathers dust and becomes a classic, it no longer has that ‘bite,’ ” Kenworthy Executive Director Colin Mannex said. “The compositions themselves have been commissioned to help us to reevaluate these films as living works of art.”
Enter University of Idaho composition and music theory instructor Ruby Fulton, whose score for Jean Cocteau’s surreal 1930 fantasy “The Blood of a Poet” debuts next Thursday.
August Frank/Inland 360
From left, Ruby Fulton, Kate Skinner and Eneida Larti look over notes during a practice for the Silent Film Festival. They will perform Fulton’s score during next Thursday’s movie, on May 11.
Fulton, who lives in Baltimore and teaches mostly remotely, has worked with UI’s Lionel Hampton School of Music for seven years, and the other three composers in the festival — Dylan Champagne, Liam Marchant and Spencer Cuppage — came through the program while she was there.
“It’s just cool for me as a teacher to see these composers out here doing great work,” she said. “I can’t wait to hear what they’ve made for this. It’s a nice full circle, and thanks to Colin inviting us.”
Fulton chose the film she scored from a short list Mannex provided, immediately keying on Cocteau’s “dreamlike and strange” work. “(It’s) all about the creative process, which was interesting to me as a creative person,” she said.
The electronic score for three keyboards is “groove-based,” she explained: “There’s a lot of groove and pulse, and (it’s) also kind of grainy. And it’s also strange.”
She achieved that strangeness by “mashing together” standard chords and playing beats at different speeds to create the experience of a dream, outside of reality — “more imaginary,” she said.
“I also experimented with what I think are kind of luscious harmonies,” she said. “Strange and luscious.”
The festival serves as a goodbye for Fulton, who will move on to freelancing at the end of the semester.
“It will be sad that she’s moving onto the next chapter,” Mannex said. “But we’re all excited for her to have this culminating experience here, beyond the school of music, to celebrate her contributions in the community.”
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Stone (she/her) can be reached at mstone@inland360.com.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Silent Film Festival.
WHERE: Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, 508 S. Main St., Moscow.
COST: Tickets, $10-$15 per show or $50 for a festival pass, are at kenworthypac.square.site.
WHEN:
May 4: “The Wind” (1928), with score by Dylan Champagne.
May 11: “The Blood of a Poet” (1930), with score by Ruby Fulton.
May 18: “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1921), with score by Liam Marchant.
May 25: “Sherlock Jr.” (1924), with score by Spencer Cuppage.
