“No Longer Silent” presents historical films from the silent movie era set to live performances of contemporary composed soundtracks. At November’s showing, Jeffrey Angeley and Steven Brum are the featured performers.

Their score, based on rehearsed improvisations, will be performed as the backdrop to the 1929 feature-length silent film “Man with a Movie Camera” by Dziga Vertov. Both a documentary and a cinematic art piece, the film depicts ordinary life in early 20th-century Russian and Ukrainian cities using complex and innovative camera techniques such as multiple exposure, fast motion, slow motion, freeze frames, match cuts, jump cuts, split screens, Dutch angles, extreme close-ups, tracking shots, reversed footage, stop motion animations, and self-reflexive visuals. It explores the modernity of the cities while simultaneously addressing modern art. Vertov creates a compelling film that intentionally exists beyond the structure of a narrative arc, wherein the cameraman, the camera, and the cities themselves serve as the only recurring or central characters. The soundtrack provided by Angeley and Brum aims to capture the spirit of the film, offering captivating melody and motion without pushing a narrative arc.

Jeffrey Angeley is a full-time music instructor, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist performer, and event organizer. His resume includes a monthly traditional music series running continuously for seven years, multi-year open mics, free public music instruction programs, multi-year runs of silent movies set to live music, and long-running concert series. He utilizes various musical gadgets at his disposal and his broad experience across multiple genres to ensure each performance is a unique concert experience.
 

Steven Brum is an accomplished performer, composer, arranger, and improvisational musician. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School of Music and teaches at Symphony Music Shop. His live performances include events like Mattapoisett's Harbor Days and the New Bedford Roots and Branches Festival. He is a veteran of the "New Sounds of Silents” series, having both composed parts and performed them for several films from 2018 to the present. Along with Angeley, he was featured at the event that inspired this series: a performance of “The Boat” by Buster Keaton at the Fishing Heritage Museum in 2018.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Fairhaven Cultural Council, a local agency supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.