Before the show, join us for drinks and a conversation with composer Madeleine Cocolas and Steve Peters of Nonsequitur and Wayward Music Series at the Cloud Room at 6:30! $35 per person, includes ticket to the show and drinks. Buy Tickets Here>
The Cloud Room is located in the ChopHouse (top terrace), on 11th between Pike and Union.
Puget Soundtrack is a series of live score commissions presented by Northwest Film Forum. The Film Forum invites musicians and bands to choose a film for which they would like to create and perform a live score.
Australian-born, Seattle-based composer Madeleine Cocolas chose to revisit Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller masterpiece, The Birds, for her Puget Soundtrack. Hitchcock’s eerie brand of horror is impeccable in his iconic film about the indomitable power of nature. When a beautiful newcomer arrives in a sleepy coastal California town, an escalating series of bird attacks begins to unsettle and unravel residents. Featuring characteristic visual richness and glacial suspense, The Birds continues to intrigue and unnerve after more than fifty years.
Called at turns a comment on an industrialized environment falling out of balance, and an allegory of the disruption of female sexuality, the film’s bold imagery lends itself to reinterpretation.
Madeleine Cocolas on her selection:
I have always loved The Birds, from Melanie Daniels’ immaculate wardrobe, to Mitch Brenner’s casual arrogance, to the side glances that Melanie and Annie Hayworth throw at each other. This film is terrifying, it has no music, and it is perfect as it is.
I was initially apprehensive to add a score, because it was so consciously left out in the first place. However, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be fun to add music that was an unexpected fit with the film and that didn’t follow typical horror conventions or reference the film’s distinctive era. I am including all the original dialogue and sound effects from the film and adding a dreamy, synth heavy soundtrack. My hope is to achieve a certain uneasiness and tension from the juxtaposition of the perfectly put together horror film from 1963 against an electronic reverb-laden score from 2015.
About Madeleine Cocolas
Madeleine Cocolas is an Australian born, Seattle based, classically trained composer and musician. She has been commissioned to write for dance, film and site-specific works for various galleries, and during the years 2013 and 2014 embarked on her critically acclaimed ‘Fifty Two Weeks’ Project. She has released music on the London label Bigo & Twigetti and will release her debut album through Futuresequence later this year.
Madeleine previously worked as a Music Supervisor, where she sourced and licensed music for a number of award winning Australian television programs, including the International Emmy-nominated shows ‘Please Like Me’ and ‘Dance Academy.’
“The Birds represents better than any other Hitchcock film the extreme polarities of his universe: vicious unpredictability and moral and emotional disorder on the one hand, and rigorous stylistic control and formal organization, on the other.” –Not Coming to a Theater Near You
“Few films depict so eerily yet so meticulously the metaphysical and historical sense of a world out of joint.” –The New Yorker