1 of 2
Rats & People: Matt Frederick, Matt Pace, Brien Seyle, Robert Laptad, Emma Tiemann, and Heather Rice. Photograph by Kevin A. Roberts.
2 of 2
If you saw Shakespeare Festival St. Louis' production of Twelfth Night (which had its final performance last night), you've heard the music of Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra. The band wrote all of those song interludes the characters play on stage (more on that here). As its name implies, the ensemble's main gig is writing original soundtracks to silent films. So far, they've scored Buster Keaton’s Go West; F.W. Murnau’s The Last Laugh and Nosferatu; Sergei Eisenstein’s Strike; Erich von Stroheim’s Greed; and the shorts of Georges Méliès.
But R&P has not limited itself to film scores. In fact, last September, it performed a heart-stopping series of musical pieces at the Pulitzer Foundation for Arts for Sound Waves: DIALing up an Epiphany, an event that featured music and poetry that riffed on the exhibit In the Still Ephipany. The songs were based on a cycle of six Wallace Stevens poems, titled "Revue," which first appeared in The Dial, the legendary Modernist lit mag that published the work of W.B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams, Djuna Barnes, e.e. cummings, Marianne Moore, and T.S. Eliot. It was also a departure for the band in that it was not just instrumental, and included sung lyrics (which were performed by soprano Natalie Huggins of Wax Wine—her bandmate, cellist Liz Myers, was also part of the project).
The band recorded those songs over two days in January (while they were still prepping for Twelfth Night, no less!) and pressed them as an EP, Revue Songs, which was mixed and mastered by Chris Turnbaugh of Studio CTS and features cover art by artists Ronald Weaver. That record will be released Saturday, June 29 with an all-ages show at at Off Broadway (3509 Lemp). R&P will play songs from the new record along with "several of the ensemble's favorite artists," and will be joined by brotherfather and Cassie Morgan and the Lonely Pine. Other stuff you need to know: doors 7:30 p.m., music kicks off at 8 p.m., and the door is $10.
For a taste of the new record, check out “Frogs Eat Butterflies. Snakes Eat Frogs. Hogs Eat Snakes. Men Eat Hogs," below, including the beautiful video by St. Louis artist Kara Clark.
