The Snark Ensemble, founded in 2005, is an instrumental chamber ensemble dedicated to the creation and performance of new original scores for silent film. The ensemble (named after Lewis Carroll’s mock-epic poem The Hunting of the Snark) consists of a core of three composer-instrumentalists, who between them draw on a wide range of instruments in creating and performing original scores. The ensemble frequently welcomes guest artists to join it in live performances.
Because each member is a trained composer, the Snark Ensemble is dedicated to creating fully-composed and notated scores for each film, with the goal of producing works which are also enjoyable and coherent as music independent of the films which inspired them.
The ensemble also creates and performs concert versions of their film scores, as exemplified by excerpts from Andrew Simpson’s score inspired by Laurel and Hardy’s Liberty (1929).
The ensemble has produced music for dance, as well. Kick the Dog (choreographer’s title: To Flower), commissioned by the Jane Franklin Dance Company, was premiered in January 2006 and repeated at the New York International Dance Festival in July 2006. The work also received several performances at the Washington, DC Capital Fringe Festival in summer 2006. (Click here to access streaming video of excerpts from To Flower, on the Jane Franklin Dance Company’s website.)
The Snark Ensemble recently completed composing and recording sixteen new instrumental scores for a retrospective collection of the films of Harry Langdon. The four DVD box set is due out December of 2007 on the Allday Entertainment. label and distributed through Facets of Chicago. A new four-DVD set, “Becoming Charley Chase“, is due out in late 2008.