The Best Custer Ensemble May 25, 2012

The Beth Custer Ensemble will be presenting Custer's award-winning live soundtrack to the 1929 silent film, MY GRANDMOTHER.

Forgotten for a half-century, director Kote Mikaberidze's MY GRANDMOTHER (CHEMI BEBIA/1929) is a delightful example of the Soviet Eccentric Cinema movement as well as an irreverent satire of the then still-young Soviet State system. Noted for its anarchic styles—which include stop-motion, puppetry, exaggerated camera angles, animation and constructivist sets—the film unspools the foibles and follies that abound when a Georgian paper pusher, modeled after American silent comic Harold Lloyd, loses his job.

With a score that was originally commissioned by the Pacific Film Archive and recorded with an Aaron Copland Recording Fund award, Beth Custer has created a quick-paced pastiche of American jazz and blues, contemporary classical, and world folk music.

The Beth Custer Ensemble features guitarist David James (The Coup, Spearhead, Afro Funk Experience), drummer Jan Jackson, (Will Bernard, Flaming Groovies), bassist Vicky Grossi (PC Muñoz, Bitches Brew), trumpeter Chris Grady (Tom Waits, Grassy Knoll), cellist Jessica Ivry (Real Vocal String Quartet, Amy X Neuburg), violinist Dina Maccabee (Real Vocal String Quartet, Vienna Teng), narrator Freddi Price (Rube Waddell, Extra Action Marching Band), and clarinets/keyboardist Beth Custer (Trance Mission, Club Foot Orchestra, Eighty Mile Beach) will be performing Custer's score live with this rare film.

Official Website: http://www.montalvoarts.org