French musician Jean-François Alcoléa is bringing “Right in the Eye,” a program of silent films with live music, to the Gilmore Piano Festival at 2 pm on Saturday, May 2 at Chenery Auditorium. It features 12 films by pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès accompanied by Alcoléa‘s original live music performed by Alcoléa and two fellow musicians.
The show spans a range of Méliès' work, from science fiction adventures to documentaries to magic-themed films, with shorts as brief as 50 seconds and longer pieces running up to 14 minutes. Each film received its own unique sound-verse. "I wanted to give a very specific identity to each film," Alcoléa tells Cara Lieurance, "and according to how I craft them, or the structure of the show that can bring this kind of journey."
The stage setup is eye-opening. Alongside a piano and keyboard, audiences will see unusual instruments including music boxes, glasses, and everyday objects repurposed as percussion. "I'm creating architectures of sounds that's a complement […] in order to help color the music with images," he explains.
As explained by Alcoléa, Georges Méliès was originally a stage magician who ran the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris, who discovered cinema at the Lumière Brothers' historic 1895 screening and went on to invent many of the special effects still used in filmmaking today. His legacy nearly vanished after he burned much of his own work late in his career. His granddaughter later traveled the world to recover surviving copies, meaning all existing prints are duplicates of the originals.
Billed as family-friendly, the concert will include an opportunity for audience members to come onstage after the show and explore the instruments. "The more we share, the more we'll be happy," Alcoléa says.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
