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PHOTO: Kurt Coble with one of his robotic creations. His robotic orchestra will accompany screenings of the silent horror classic “The Phantom of the Opera” next weekend.



March 23, 2003

Looking like a horror show of electrodes and wires, Kurt Coble's orchestra challenges the definition of traditional music. As the associate concertmaster of Broadway's "Phantom of the Opera," he thinks the phantom would be impressed with his new invention.

"The phantom himself was an inventor, he was a genius," Coble says. "I think if the phantom was here right now he'd love this."

Coble's band of partially artificial musicians will debut in their first full length performance next week at the University of Bridgeport's Mertens Theater. They will perform an original score to 1925 silent classic, "The Phantom of the Opera" starring Lon Chaney.

"It's stopped being a project," Coble says. "It is now officially an obsession."

The performance is a testament to Coble's undergraduate training at Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York. Founded not long after George Eastman perfected the film process, the school's original purpose was to train theater musicians to accompany silent movies, Coble says.

Having a full orchestra accompany a silent movie harks back to the earliest days of silent pictures, when "Phantom of the Opera" was first released, says Cortlandt Hull, founder of the Silverscreen Movie Museum in Bristol, which provided the film for the screening.

The audience will watch a rare tinted version, he says. When silent film was first introduced, scenes were tinted to heighten the mood. In this version night is tinted blue, love scenes are tinted a pinkish magenta and the phantom's lair is tinted green. There is also rare scene of the masked ball sequence that is tinted in Technicolor with red and green where the phantom comes dressed as the red death.

The whole process of tinting was painstaking, Hull says, so not all film versions have it.

Coble's artificial musicians could never substitute for professional musicians, he says. However, he finds it ironic that they could be used in the place of recorded music.

Coble was involved in the recent musicians strike that shut down Broadway. One of the inspirations for his band of partially artificial musicians, he says, originated from the first threats by theater management to limit the size and strength of Broadway orchestras by replacing them with recorded or synthesized music.

"This is my reaction to the closing in of the walls," he says.

Protecting the jobs of the musicians on Broadway protects the integrity of the industry, Coble says. It's what makes Broadway special.

"Cities like Tokyo and Las Vegas have done away with live music," he says.

Using an orchestra of robots in the place of recorded music stays within the spirit of Broadway because it is still live music. They could never replace human musicians because they lack the nuance and creativity of a human being, Coble says.

The purpose of Coble's orchestra is to use musical instruments in a way that humans cannot.

One example of a partially artificial musician is Jack, a solid body electric violin. Mounted to a foot stool, Jack has a sliding bow with a spinning wheel that causes the strings to vibrate. It originated as an instrument Coble used while playing with a bar band so his professional violin would not be in danger of flying beer bottles.

"It took me three days to build that thing and about $7 in wood," he says. "It sounds kind of gnarly."

Other instruments include a variety of drums, cellos, both electric and acoustic guitars, and a series of violins. They are guided by a sequencing program written in Visual Basic by Coble's brother-in-law.

Each instrument has a strong and specific personality, Coble says, and there is nothing synthetic about the sounds they produce.

"I stress very strongly that there is absolutely no MIDI technology," Coble says, referring to Musical Instrument Digital Interface, a digital language used to blend computers with electronic instruments.

The music that will accompany the silent screening of the "Phantom of the Opera" is an original score that challenges the traditional lines that divide noise and music, Coble says.

The music composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber for the Broadway musical has a similar dissonant quality, Coble says, and can also be very jarring. Due to Coble's involvement with the Broadway production there will references to the musical, though they may be subtle.

"This is my feeble attempt to return something," Coble says. "Being involved with 'Phantom' is a tremendous opportunity."

To write a musical score for the 75-minute film, Coble composed music in five-minute segments with each segment taking two hours to compose. It will be continually refined until the last minute.

"I won't be done until five minutes before the show," Coble laughs.

Hull and Coble hope to collaborate again on other projects. The next project will hopefully be a musical score for the 1927 film "Metropolis," Coble says. Hull thinks it is fitting that a movie about the creation of a robot will have a musical score played by robots.

"Silent films will be resurrected through this new technology," Coble says.

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Performances will be Friday at 8 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.; and Sunday, March 30 at 2 and 8 p.m. at Mertens Theater, corner of Iranastan and University avenues, Bridgeport. $5 suggested donation. For information call the University of Bridgeport Music Department at 576

Kurt Coble with one of his robotic creations. His robotic orchestra will accompany screenings of the silent horror classic “The Phantom of the Opera” next weekend.