(September 17, 2008)

Contact: Rick DelaHaya, Centenary News Services, 318.869.5073

Ensemble to Add New Twist to Silent Classic Film
Friday, Oct. 3

Red Heroine

SHREVEPORT, La.— Kilpatrick Auditorium on the Centenary campus will be the site for a one-of-a kind movie and music performance Friday, Oct. 3, when the Devil Music Ensemble combines a modern music score to the 1920s silent movie, Red Heroine. The performance begins at 7 p.m. and is FREE and open to the public.

Formed in Boston in 1999 by guitarist Brendon Wood, Devil Music Ensemble explores all facets of music from rock to electronic, orchestral to folk, and improvisational to incidental. Devil Music Ensemble is both a rock band and a multi-media tour-de-force, performing both composed and improvised scores to silent films. While their studio recordings have garnered the accolades of the Boston Phoenix, the Village Voice, and the Boston Globe, their live scoring of classic and modern silent films has gained them an eclectic following from Boston to Bowling Green.

The Devil Music Ensemble consists of three talented composers and musicians, who wrote the score for the film, and perform it using about 10 instruments total. Silent films, of course, were never really silent. They were always shown with live music accompaniment, but usually with a single piano or organ. These classically trained musicians use guitars, lap guitars, vibraphones, violins, clarinets, drums, accordions, banjos, and a few more to produce a truly unique sound. On their Fall Tour, besides Centenary College, they will be playing 40 venues around the country, including the Chicago Cultural Center, the International Film Series in Boulder, Colo., Seattle International Film Festival, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, Calif., the Oklahoma City Art Museum, Smithsonian Institute, and the Rotunda in Philadelphia.

The ensemble will play live accompaniment of their original soundtrack to the classic Chinese Kung Fu film Red Heroine, the only feature-length Chinese martial arts film from the silent era that still exists in it entirety. Episode six of RED HEROINE (a.k.a. RED KNIGHT-ERRANT), the only surviving episode of the 13-part serial, is also one of the few complete and earliest extant silent martial arts films. Made at the height of the martial arts craze in 1920s Shanghai, this lively tale about the rise of a woman warrior features the genre's then-characteristic blend of pulp and mystical derring-do.

sample soundtrack music from the Devil Music Ensemble

For more information, please contact Michelle Glaros at 318.869.5264 or email.


About Centenary College of Louisiana

Centenary College is a private, four-year arts and sciences college affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Founded in 1825, it is the oldest chartered liberal arts college west of the Mississippi River and is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Centenary is one of 16 colleges and universities constituting the Associated Colleges of the South and is regularly rated as one of the top colleges in the South. In 2008 Centenary College celebrates 100 years in Shreveport and Bossier City.