- Video Recorded May 2010

The People’s Liberation Big Band was not the first ensemble to re-score or perform live along with the 1925 Soviet classic Battleship Potemkin. In order to retain its relevance for future generations, director Sergei Eisenstein indicated that the populist film should have a new score composed for it every 20 years. Many composers and ensembles have taken him up, but Brad Cox and the People’s Liberation big band have offered a humorous, touching, and certainly novel approach to Battleship Potemkin’s story. 

The date chosen for the performance (and the name of the alternative jazz ensemble) fittingly coincided with International Worker’s Day. This was the second annual live performance of the score, and the Paul Mesner Puppet Studio was packed with an eager audience. Although I have no complaints about the puppet studio’s cozy vibe, last year’s performance venue, the Pistol Social Club in the West Bottoms, seemed appropriately gritty; the Pistol made the audience feel it could have started an underground resistance right then and there.

Battleship Potemkin is much more than a hastily-made communist propaganda flick; this film truly has resounded with generations—if not for its message, at least for its brilliant and stunning visual quality. Eisenstein was the original master of the soviet montage, an editing technique which sequences seemingly unrelated images; the audience subconsciously associates one scene with another. Jeff Harshbarger, one of the four contributing composers for this project (who are also performers with the ensemble) plays upon these montage sequences quite creatively. At times, characters in the film are assigned certain musical motifs which are played whenever they appear on screen. This becomes quite funny when rapid cuts are made between images of two characters; the motifs begin and end rapidly and eventually dissolve into the musical texture. 
Each composer was assigned different sections of the film to score. Brad Cox’s music tended to mix through-composed sequences with sections that lean on the players’ excellent group improvisation skills; the audience could see Cox’s arms waving, conjuring and stirring the music to climactic moments, directing hits and entrances perfectly timed with events in the film. 

Among a couple of other sections, composer Patrick Alonzo Conway scored the canonic Odessa Stairway sequence. Conway’s scoring was probably the most rhythmic and minimalist. He was able to effectively accompany the powerful film sequence with dramatic swells, intense percussion, and the eventual freak-out forte section which the band does so well. 

Jeffrey Ruckman scored some of the most poignant moments of the film. He used themes from traditional Russian folk tunes as the basis for most of his score, and his arrangements were breathtaking. He pared the ensemble down quite a bit to create chamber settings of the folk themes. When he brought in the rest of the ensemble to crescendo dramatically, those melodies shone as some of the most memorable moments in the score. 

I was surprised how seamlessly the score was pieced together. The band is excellent at improvising transitions between different “movements”, and they were usually aided by the very capable and expressive conducting of the four composers. This score was a certain success. The audience agreed, and the night was a joyous celebration of workers everywhere.

Published Tuesday, 25th May 2010 - Written by Lauren Wells