Recorded live at Brookfield Place in February of 2015, listen to music by composer Alfonso Vilallonga and the Wordless Music Orchestra, with special guest Julian Koster (of Neutral Milk Hotel) for the silent flim, Blancanieves (Snow White). Where many of the films from the New Sounds Live Silent Film Series are from the silent film era of the 1920’s, Blancanieves, is a 2012 film set in southern Spain in the 1920s, written and directed by Pablo Berger.

In a truly grim and adult take on Snow White, the story goes like this: once upon a time there was a little girl who had never known her mother. She learned the art of her father, a celebrated bullfighter – now paralyzed in a wheelchair, but was hated by her evil social-climbing stepmother with a penchant for S&M. One day she ran away with a troupe of dwarves who travel between cities staging bullfights. They name her Blancanieves, Spanish for Snow White. When one of them is wounded during a fight, she leaps into the ring and distracts the bull, using matador skills she learned from her father. Eventually she, too, becomes a famed matador.

PROGRAM #3704– New Sounds Live Silent Film Series (First aired on 03/19/2015)  

ARTIST: Wordless Music Orchestra, feat. Alfonso Villalonga, accordion/ukulele/banjo; Julian Koster, musical saw; Ryan McAdams, conductor
WORK: Alfonso Villalonga: Blancanieves, excerpts [46:00]
RECORDING: Live @ Brookfield Place, New York, Feb. 2015
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available.
INFO: The original soundtrack is available on Milan - #3994552 store.milanrecords.com