Select a review:

Review of the "Wild Oranges" Score—Film Music Magazine

NPR Interview with Vivek Maddala

"Wild Oranges" Performance with Third Angle--The Oregonian

Review of "The Patsy" Score—Film Music Magazine

"Ace of Hearts" Review Excerpt—DVD Verdict

Excerpt from "The Silent Treatment"—
The Oregonian

Comments on "The Patsy" — Salon.com

Comments on "The Patsy" — National Film Preservation Foundation

Local Composer Scores Silent Film— Gainesville Sun

Excerpt from "The Patsy" Review—San Francisco Examiner

Silent Films Tempt Soundtrack Composer—India-West

Wild Oranges Live Performance at Lincoln Hall

by David Stabler
The Oregonian, October 27, 2006

PART I

Third Angle has a small but growing side business recording soundtracks for silent films through Turner Classic Movies. The new-music group's latest venture is King Vidor's 1924 suspense thriller "Wild Oranges," which it will perform during screenings of the film Friday and Saturday at Lincoln Hall.

"Wild Oranges" is a sophisticated 90-minute film set in a bay near the Georgia swamps, where John Woolfolk (Frank Mayo) lands in his yacht. After the death of his wife in a carriage accident, he sails around the world where, at one point, he goes ashore for water. There, he discovers an old man and his granddaughter, Nellie, being held prisoner by Iscah Nicholas, a half-crazed, half-childlike homicidal maniac. Woolfolk fights the old brute and takes Nellie to his yacht, where the struggle continues to the death.

Vivek Maddala, an award-winning film composer, wrote the "Wild Oranges" score. He's composed a halfdozen film scores, including a soundtrack for Greta Garbo's "The Mysterious Lady." Ron Blessinger, the ensemble's artistic director, calls the music for "Wild Oranges" a "lush Hollywood score," with elements of Elmer Bernstein and Bernard Hermann. "Wild Oranges" is the latest Turner Classic Movies project to feature music by young composers.

... Stay after the concert to hear the composer and Third Angle musicians talk about the film-scoring process...

PART II

Nellie Stope lives with her grandfather on a remote island off the Florida coast. But they're not alone. An escaped prisoner lurks in the swamps and periodically pops up to terrorize Nellie. He likes to make her stand on a tree stump in a swamp, surrounded by lip-smacking alligators.

Aesthetically, King Vidor's 1924 silent thriller "Wild Oranges" -- think a blending of "Cape Fear" and "Psycho" -- is an ice age away from today's techno-laden movies. That is precisely the point of Third Angle's concert over the weekend. Portland's we'll-try-anything-once, new-music ensemble deliberately chose an old-fashioned vehicle to illustrate how chamber music connects to different art forms.

Third Angle's night at the movies plugged chamber music into popular culture. What's more, the group did it with brand new music -- which frequently has been the bane of classical music audiences -- Vivek Maddala's lush, lyrical score.

"Wild Oranges" is a weird film. Creepy things happen in the swamps and forest. Nellie's grandfather, a Civil War veteran, peers anxiously out the window of his plantation house. He has what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder. But there's more: Rocking chairs rock by themselves. Shutters bang in the wind. A nasty-looking dog barks, his breath steaming in the early morning.

When a strapping, good-looking stranger arrives on the island, he falls for Nellie, and they plot her escape. But the Caliban-like escaped prisoner finds out about their plans and tries to stop them. An amazingly long fistfight ensues (at least for contemporary sensibilities), during which the two men tumble down a flight of stairs, through the underbrush and onto the dock. Flames engulf the house and the nasty dog breaks free and mauls the prisoner. Nellie and her man make their James-Bond like escape onto their boat and sail clear.

It's campy and melodramatic and funny to us, but the film's undertones are dark.

Which brings us to the music, scored for strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion. Vivek Maddala plays his film score pretty straight, playing on Max Steiner and Bernard Hermann traditions with lyrical love themes, luxuriant harmonies that identify emotional states, some nicely placed allusions to jazz and piquant dissonances for conflict.

My only criticism is that he chose to play it so straight: A touch of humor or irony would have warmed us to the film even more.

Maddala himself conducted the Third Angle musicians, who gave crisp, articulate performances, showing their commitment to the score with bold, impassioned playing.

The concert at Lincoln Hall began with an even earlier silent film, a hilarious animated bug film, "Revenge," scored in a lively funk style by New York composer Randall Wolff.

The Turner Classic Movies channel will broadcast the premiere of "Wild Oranges" with Third Angle's recording of the soundtrack at 9 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 5.