Gary Lucas's blog

Just returned from a stellar performance Saturday night April 15th accompanying the legendary 1931 Spanish "Dracula" with my original live solo guitar soundtrack at the Off Plus Camera International Festival of Independent Films in lovely Krakow Poland.

The setting for this, the Polish premiere of my project, was the fabulous Lizard King club right off the Old Town Square.

Close to 11pm I took the stage with 2 guitars and a battery of fx pedals and played a continuous score for nearly two hours accompanying this famously music free film (well, there is a snatch of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" in the title sequence that I harmonize with, but otherwise I was on my own, with my own original music--about 50% composed themes and 50% improvised--which keeps it fresh as I never play it the same way twice).

After one hour and forty minutes I received a prolonged ovation from the packed audience, a repeat of various international triumphant performances I've had accompanying the film around the world since I performed the world premiere at 31st Havana Film Festival in Dec, 2009.

Since then I have performed my score accompanying this amazing and rare Dracula film in every way superior to the Bela Lugosi / Tod Browning version which was being filmed during the day on the same sets at Universal Studios in Holllywood--this version was filmed on the same sets at night with a Latin speaking cast and a different director, George Melford--the editing rhythms are more fluid, the cinematography is truly dazzling with lots of extended camera movement unlike the famously static original, essentially a moribund photographed stage play--the costumes are more alluring and the women are definitely hotter (viva sultry Lupita Tovar as Eva!)

This year I performed with Spanish "Dracula" at the Transylvania Film Festival last May outside a crumbling old castle in the Carpathian Mountains, the Sevilla Film Festival last November (where the famous director Jerzy Skolimowski caught my performance, which received a standing ovation that night, and subsequently invited me to perform it in Krakow), at the 48th New York Film Festival in Lincoln Center last October and at the London Jazz Festival in November in beautiful Queen Elizabeth Hall (where my performance received 4 Stars in The Guardian), and in Richmond Virginia last week at the James River Film Festival

Check out my web page all about my Spanish Dracula" project with photos, stills, project dewcription and clips from the film with my live music on the soundtrack at http://garylucas.com/www/dracula  

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