On Dec. 11th 2009 Gary Lucas ("The Thinking Man's Guitar Hero"--The New Yorker) played the world premiere of his new solo guitar score accompanying a screening of the legendary Spanish-language "Dracula" (1931, d. George Melford) at the Havana Film Festival The film was made at night in Hollywood on the same sets and with the same script as the Bela Lugosi "Dracula" but with a Spanish speaking cast, including the great Spanish actor Carlos Villarias as Dracula and Mexican spitfire Lupita Tovar as Eva. Like Lugosi's Dracula, the film has dialogue in Spanish but virtually no music on the soundtrack. A complete print of this hitherto thought lost film was discovered in the Havana Film Archive in the 80's, so Lucas was bringing it all back home, with a fresh new experimental guitar score to boot. This video clip contains the audio recording of Gary's live performance in Cuba mixed onto the existing soundtrack of the film. The La Rampa Cinema in downtown Havana was packed for Lucas' tour de force performance, which received a standing ovation at the end after Gary played non stop for an hour and forty five minutes.
The Cuban critics hugged it::
"The US guitarist Gary Lucas defied the gods and brought back to life one of the darkest and most terrifying creatures in the literature of horror...Dracula did not need to rise from his coffin in order to return from the realm of the dead; he did it through the guitar of this legendary musician, who, like the most celebrated vampire from Transylvania, has been 'condemned' to immortality."--Granma 12/13/09
Lucas next performed the European premiere of his project appropriately enough at the Transylvania Film Festival in late May 2010 outside the crumbling ancient Banffy Castle in Bontida Romania high in the Carpathian Mountains, and received another rapturous reception:
"One of the most impressive events in this year's edition of the Transylvania International Film Festival...Gary Lucas was formidable--the audience was speechless as for almost 2 hours Lucas' fingers never disconnected from his guitar...an event that no one will ever forget."--Adevarul 6/1/10
Gary Lucas performed the US premiere Oct. 9th 2010 at the 48th New York Film Festival at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center to similarly enthusiastic reviews:
" Gary Lucas's bluesy, lyrical score for George Melford's "Spanish Dracula" creates the perfect sonic ambiance for a scandalously neglected film. Lucky viewers are treated to both an impeccably preserved print of an overlooked classic film and haunting guitar riffs that reverberate in their memories long after the screening is over."
--Richard Porton, Cineaste Magazine
"The Saturday evening event was terrific, an intoxicating mix of music and imagery. Gary's score builds a nice, eerie mood--an immersion in an atmosphere of perdition and romantic longing."
--Glenn Kenny, Premiere
full review here: http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2010/10/things-that-dont...
"Gary Lucas manages to make a couple of guitars sound like a massive orchestra, albeit one with zithers and theremins and other such odds and ends. And the music he creates isn't mere accompaniment, but causes you to see the movie itself in a whole new light."
--Scott Foundas, Associate Program Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center
"Any decent musician can score a silent film, but it takes a certain audacity -- or perversity -- to wrap new music around a talkie. For George Melford's Spanish-language _Dracula,_ audaciously perverse Gary Lucas uses two guitars (one acoustic, one electric) and an array of effects pedals to evoke apocalyptic horsemanship, smothering spiderwebs, virgin appetites, and the ineluctable cosmic dread of über-vampyre Carlos Villarias. The old blood-sucker has never seemed quite so vital."
--Richard Gehr, Village Voice
He is next scheduled to perform with the film at the Sevilla Film Festival on Nov. 9th for the Spanish premiere, and will make the UK premiere at the London Jazz Festival in association with BBC 3 at Queen Elizabeth Hall on Nov. 21st 2010.
For more info and updates on the project:
http://garylucas.com/www/dracula
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dracula 1931 spanish version finalby EIRHernandez24,898 views
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