Syntax Cinema Orchestra has appeared on the Hungarian musical scene in 2006. With its compositions on the verge of jazz and contemporary music, anticipating the visual world of films, Syntax has become one of the most progressive members of the Hungarian underground jazz scene starting to get recognized also internationally.
The “Syntax-conception” of the interrelating music and images lifts their shows above any conventional category. Their first album (Mozizom - Cinema'C, 2008, AR01/ ) features strongly atmospheric and montage-like compositions that interact with videomontages based on classical films (of Fellini, Jarmush, Fritz Lang, Tarkovsky).
Since 2009 they accompanie early silent films: Wiene: Dr. Caligari and Chaplin: The Champion.
our current projects:
1. Chaplin: The Champion
The Champion is a comedy film released in 1915 by Essanay Studios, starring Charlie Chaplin alongside Edna Purviance and Leo White. Essanay co-owner and star, Broncho Billy Anderson can be seen as an enthusiastic audience member in the boxing match scene.
Chaplin is a fascinating actor, director, composer, but here in this piece for us he is first of all a dancer. Our music is composed and performed in this spirit. The orchestra follows, counterpoints the visual movements, in other parts of the film we add an alternative musical texture to it. We hope it will not only be amusing for the audience, but also a dance theatre experience.
Syntax Orchestra reaches back to 1920 to the early silent horror movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and creates a contemporary cinematic show out of it.
The film’s story concerns a series of murders, which occur in a German town, coinciding with the arrival of the hypnotist Dr. Caligari who runs a side-show at the local fair. Using the significant visual language of the expressionism the film sets out to convey the subjective mental state of the story’s narrator and touches upon issues as mind-control, social oppression and the uncanny of bureaucratic apparatus.
Syntax Cinema Orchestra uses the film as material to create unique audiovisual landscapes. It mixes contemporary jazz, free imporvisation and montage-sturctured melodic themes and uses instruments as metallophone or wind gong to underline the atmospheric expressivity of the film while dissolving its grotesqueness with humor. In The interpretation of the orchestra the scary movie turns into a contemporary tale of past and present anxieties.
duration: full version (70 min), short version (45 min)
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