{"id":1368,"date":"2015-09-22T21:33:40","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T02:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blackworldcinema.net\/blog\/?p=1368"},"modified":"2025-06-03T00:31:25","modified_gmt":"2025-06-03T05:31:25","slug":"1368","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackworldcinema.net\/blog\/2015\/09\/22\/1368\/","title":{"rendered":"Oct 1, BODY & SOUL w\/Renee Baker’s CHICAGO MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bodysoulART\"<\/a>Thurs Oct 1, 7pm, Admission $6.00
\nSMG Chatham
\n210 W 87th St
\nChicago, IL
\nblackworldcinema.net<\/a><\/span>
\n\"Eventbrite<\/a><\/p>\n

BODY AND SOUL (1925)
\nDirected by: Oscar Micheaux. featuring Paul Robeson, Mercedes Gilbert, Julia T Russell, Lawrence Chenault, Marshall Rogers, Lillian Johnson, Madame Robinson, Chester A Alexander.<\/p>\n

Featuring AACM composer Renee’ Baker’s CHICAGO MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT presenting a new creative jazz score for Oscar Micheaux’s silent feature film<\/p>\n

Roughly between the years of 1915 and 1945, race films were developed by African American filmmakers African American audiences whose images of themselves were distorted and caricatured by the prevailing industry. One of the most renowned film makers of this era was Oscar Michaeux. Michaeux produced film works that both showed the humanity of the African American population and endowed his films with social commentary and tongue-in-cheek humor.<\/span><\/p>\n

Body and Soul gave African American audiences a chance to a pause from the heavily segregated daily life of Jim-Crow era America<\/p>\n

This 1925 race film debuts a new music score added by Renee’ Baker, composer and director of the Chicago Modern Orchestra Project.<\/p>\n

Set in the Deep, and deeply religious South, Paul Robeson’s screen debut casts him as both an evil preacher and his righteous brother, who clash over a lovely young member of the congregation. Though this is the famed singer-activist’s only silent film, his screen presence is palpable in an otherwise routine melodrama. Adapted by Micheaux from his own novel, the film bears no relation to other movies of the same name<\/p>\n

Regarding the production of a new creative jazz score for Body and Soul, Renee Baker says, ” I used a number of composition techniques including totally through composed original symphonic works, sounds recorded from sessions done with sculptural tactile scores, asemic writing scores recorded both in concert and in studio sessions. Graphic scores as well as Synaesthetic Colorfield scores were used to create mood settings that depict the life of the black American in this time period.