BY LILY BRYANT
Picture a concerto soloist out the front of an orchestra. What image comes to mind?
Perhaps they’re wearing a flashy tux, or a sparkly gown. They might be playing an eye-wateringly expensive violin, or cello, or piano. They’re probably, for the most part, standing or sitting in one place. Now imagine the music — maybe some Beethoven, or Tchaikovsky, or even Shostakovich. You probably wouldn’t anticipate hearing the sound of celery crunching, or paper ripping, or car doors slamming, right?
This August at Hamer Hall, prepare to expect the unexpected as the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra delivers the world premiere of Hollywood Parsifals Concerto for Foley Artists and Orchestra by Australian composer Thomas Meadowcroft. Presented and MSO co-commissioned as part of their concert Metropolis: Sounds of Cinema, the new concerto for Foley artists and orchestra promises to shock and delight listeners by showcasing an oft-overlooked but essential part of the world of film-making.
Put very simply, Foley art (named for 1920s sound engineer Jack Foley) is the process of adding sound effects to films, often using unorthodox objects, to help the film’s action seem organic. Typically, successful Foley art goes entirely unnoticed by an audience, but this piece does the opposite. Inspired by film music and the Foley practice, Hollywood Parsifals takes a sonic medium and removes it from its typical recording studio environment, placing it centre stage.
“The sort of standard thing of Foley is when someone breaks someone’s neck in a crime film, the Foley artist takes a piece of celery and goes ‘crack’. But in this concerto, when that happens, everything’s there except the image of someone getting their neck broken,” Thomas says.
However, the lack of visuals doesn’t reduce the evocative power of these familiar (and unfamiliar) sounds. Instead, it invites audience members to be creative, and to conjure up their own narratives to accompany what they hear.
“It’s a series of vignettes that goes through film genres, so there’s a rom-com, there’s horror, there’s a thriller, there’s sci-fi,” he explains.
“Whether you have the fantasy as a listener to go, ‘oh, that sounds like Gene Hackman running in The French Connection,’ or ‘that sounds like an outtake from The Streets of San Francisco,’ or ‘that just sounds like two guys out the front of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra messing with celery,’ is not my decision to make — that’s your decision as listener.”
In this case, those two guys are Foley artist John Simpson and percussionist Eugene Ughetti, whose contrasting musical backgrounds will be united in this work by a quest for the elusive ‘right’ sound.
“Eugene comes from a percussion practice and John comes from this Foley artist practice of watching an image and then adding a sound with such precision — he’s consummate at his job,” Thomas says.
“I thought what was interesting about both practices is that they’re both in search of soundmaking objects for creating very specific sounds but from two different artistic practices.”
This approach invites the audience to question the distinction between music and sound, and to explore the role creativity plays in bringing their favourite films to life.
“There’s a crossover of percussion into Foley where you use conventional percussion instruments, but they’re framed alongside John’s work to make them feel like they’re actually just noise makers and sound effect makers, so that’s another layer of odd poetry that’s at work in the piece,” Thomas (pictured below) says.
John Simpson, whose impressive list of film credits includes Mad Max: Fury Road, The Hobbit and The Adventures of Tintin, will also be doing a lot of things for the first time — most notably, performing out the front of an orchestra.
“Funny thing is, I didn’t realise we were right up the front until not that long ago when I saw the stage plan and went, ‘oh my God, we’re right up the front’,” John says.
“Normally my job is replacing all the human type movement — that’s things like footsteps, and hands on things, and hands on people, and then if they touch a cup and put that down or get into a car, I do the car seat — all those sorts of bits and pieces.
“But this one’s going to be completely different because there’s no picture.”
That’s not the only reason it feels completely different. In John’s practice, he typically has as many takes as he needs to capture precisely the right sound for the film. In a live performance setting, he’s only got one shot, and a lot to fit in.
“Normally, when we’re recording stuff for a film or television show, we’ll make a sound and then go back and make a sound for the next thing, and that’s all separate. What we have to do this time is do the whole lot in one go, but there’s so many fast changes with shoes, and props, that if you miss a spot it’s easy to lose where you are in the score,” he explains.
“This is a half-hour run from start to finish, where we don’t stop to try and make the noise better. Everything has to be done right the first time, so it’s slightly terrifying, but I’m also really looking forward to it.”
It’s not only an ambitious sonic project for composer, soloists, and orchestra, but a visual spectacle as well, featuring instruments that have almost certainly never graced the Hamer Hall stage before.
“Tracy and I, we’ve got coconuts and bits of celery and old door hinges, and knives and buckets, and gravel pits and sandpits and grasspits to step in,” John says.
“[Thomas] has had to write it very cleverly also with leaving spots for the sound of the Foley to happen, so it doesn’t get overpowered by the orchestra, which generally a film composer would do.”
While it might not be the concerto experience avid concertgoers are used to, John has no doubts about leaving listeners entertained.
“I think people who don’t understand the Foley work will see some crazy things going on, because we’re not dressed in all the black and white suits, we’ll just be changing shoes and wearing track pants so it doesn’t rustle too much for the microphones. But I think there might be some laughs, just watching us try to keep up and do all these things,” he explains.
“It’s nothing like people that normally go to watch an orchestral show have ever seen in their lives, I don’t think, so it’ll be fun.”
Experience Hollywood Parsifals, alongside works by Bryony Marks and David Hirschfelder (arr. Jessica Wells), in the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra program Metropolis: Sounds of Cinema, 7.30pm August 21 in Hamer Hall.
Images supplied.
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