Sound and vision – Vox Lumiere transforms silent movies

Despite being hailed as classics by film buffs, most silent movies fail to gain the audience they deserve, not through any lack of quality, but simply because audiences expect a truly multi-media experience when they go to the cinema. These days listening to a few tunes banged out on a hokey old Hammond organ as aural accompaniment just isn’t enough.

With this in mind, composer Kevin Saunders Hayes has spent the past decade or so entertaining movie lovers with his very personal and memorable take on the silents.

As a penniless music writer living in New York City with a burning obsession for film, Hayes was a regular at discount video stores, where he would rifle through bargain bins to find affordable entertainment. The best offer that he could find was a film for a dollar – the one catch being that they were all silents.

During his thankfully brief period of penury, Hayes developed a real passion for these silent films and vowed to share it with the world via his contemporary musical soundtracks. Moving to L.A. he founded Vox Lumiere, a talented company of musicians and performers who promoted their events under the tagline, “Silents you can hear.”

Over the past couple of decades Vox Lumiere has enjoyed huge success in Europe and the US with live performances directed and choreographed to accompany an array of silent films, including Lon Chaney’s classic performance as Quasimodo in 1923’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Fritz Lang’s 1927 sci-fi classic Metropolis and that classic of American silent cinema, Intolerance.

Now touring larger venues, this innovative troupe of singers, dancers and musicians have extended their artistic reach to accommodate a full symphony orchestra, making their performances truly a feast for the eyes and the ears.

Now available on DVD and CD (and nominated for a coveted Grammy Award) Vox Lumiere’s performances have become international phenomena.

Click here to find out more.

New post on at Friday, 15 January, 2010, 12:15 pm and is archived in Culture, Lifestyle, People. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.