Schedule

Groundbreaking guitarists premiere original film scores for silent films by Buster Keaton.

My Brightest Diamond & Buster Keaton's Balloonatic (1923)

Keller Willams & Buster Keaton's One Week (1920)

Redhooker & Buster Keaton's The Neighbors (1920)

My Brightest Diamond (Shara Worden), hailed for her mystical voice and mythic storytelling, premieres a score to Buster Keaton’s Balloonatic, which chronicles a young man’s misadventures with a hot air balloon and a young outdoorswoman. “I’ve always had a romantic fascination with hot air balloons,” says Worden. “They exemplify freedom and lightness of being to me. I am enchanted by Buster Keaton’s humor, darkness, lightness, romance and sorrow. This will be a delight to score and give me the opportunity to think about dreams and about believing in the impossible.”

"In my two decades of making music, I'm not sure that I've ever felt quite so challenged and inspired," says Keller Williams. Music's "mad scientist" will perform an original score to Buster Keaton’s One Week, a short comedy about newlyweds who receive a build-it-yourself house that can supposedly be built in one week. "It's been exciting, and a little scary, to embark on such a unique project," says Williams." I hope the audience feels that energy during the performance."

 Since he first appeared on the scene in the early ’90s, Williams has defined the term independent artist. And his 16 recordings tell only half the story. Keller built his reputation initially on his engaging live performances, no two of which are ever alike. Williams’ solo live shows—and his ability to improvise to his determinedly quirky tunes despite the absence of an actual band—quickly became the stuff of legend, and his audience grew exponentially when word spread about this exciting, unpredictable performer. Today, most often performing as a one-man band (a stage show constructed around Keller singing his compositions and choice cover songs while accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar connected to a Gibson Echoplex delay system that allows him to simulate a full band), Keller always reveals himself as a is an artist of great stylistic breadth and infinite imagination. He is a singer, songwriter and musician, always on a quest for the new. Keller Williams has never followed the prescribed path laid out by the conventional music business but rather one of his own making.

 Redhooker is a "dreamy mixed consort" (New York Times) led by the classically-trained guitarist Stephen Griesgraber. He will be joined by band members Maxim Moston, Ben Lively and Peter Hess in the performance of a collaboratively composed score for guitar, violins, bass clarinet and electronics for Buster Keaton's Neighbors, a comedy about young lovers and a family feud.

ABOUT MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND

A “musical omnivore,” Shara Worden molds her shape-shifting voice with the bite of a thousand shark teeth and the expansiveness of a queen (Pitchfork). She’s a vagabond of song, a classically trained opera singer, an iconoclast, a songwriter who has worked with The Decemberists, David Byrne, Sufjan Stevens as a member of the Illinoisemakers, and Bryce and Aaron Dessner on The Long Count at ELLNORA in 2009. As My Brightest Diamond, she roars with music “personal, reachable, and earthen” that can fly to the stars (Stylus).

ABOUT KELLER WILLIAMS

Since he first appeared on the scene in the early ’90s, Williams has defined the term independent artist. And his 16 recordings tell only half the story. Keller built his reputation initially on his engaging live performances, no two of which are ever alike. Williams’ solo live shows—and his ability to improvise to his determinedly quirky tunes despite the absence of an actual band—quickly became the stuff of legend, and his audience grew exponentially when word spread about this exciting, unpredictable performer. Today, most often performing as a one-man band (a stage show constructed around Keller singing his compositions and choice cover songs while accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar connected to a Gibson Echoplex delay system that allows him to simulate a full band), Keller always reveals himself as a is an artist of great stylistic breadth and infinite imagination. He is a singer, songwriter and musician, always on a quest for the new. Keller Williams has never followed the prescribed path laid out by the conventional music business but rather one of his own making.

ABOUT REDHOOKER

With a Baroque spirit and an experimenter’s daring, Stephen Griesgraber of Slow Six enfolds Redhooker in the ease of an intimate night-long conversation. Trained at the Manhattan School of Music, he composes subtle, spare songs interlaced with plaintiveness. Improvisation overlays subtle counterpoint as Griesgraber intercuts the live music with sounds from foot-pedal-driven Max/MSP software, which captures and uncoils fragments of the music just played. The call-and-response impulses ringing through his “contemplative reveries” lead to gentle, welcoming melodies (The New York Times). Vespers from 2010 offered pealing keyboards and twining strings underpinned by bass clarinet and Griesgraber’s unshakable guitar. His succinct yet soothing instrumental post-rock brims with patience and hope.