VOC Silent Film Harmonic and David Neil Lee Present: The Call of Cthulhu

David Neil Lee reads from his latest novel, The Great Outer Dark

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VOC Silent Film Harmonic performs to The Call of Cthulhu

The Call of Cthulhu (2005) A dying professor leaves his great-nephew a collection of documents pertaining to the Cthulhu Cult. Crossing decades and continents, the man begins piecing together the dread implications of the professor's inquiries. Written in 1926, the famed story is brought richly to life in the style of a classic 1920s silent movie.

The VOC Silent Film Harmonic, under the direction of Ted Harms, was formed in the summer of 2007 with the idea of performing live & improvised music to accompany silent films. The group takes its inspiration from how many silent movies were originally presented - taking themes and using them as the basis for improvisation. The overall goal is for the music to reflect, enhance and support the movie, not to overtake or distract.

Previous Playhouse screenings with the VOC Silent Film Harmonic:

The Phantom Carriage

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Dragnet Girl

Nosferatu

Vampyr

Un Chien Andalou, La Chute de la Maison Usher

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Gamera, The Giant Monster

The Hands of Orlac

Before he wrote the Hamilton Literary Award-winning “Midnight Games” trilogy, local author David Neil Lee was known for his non-fiction writing. Stopping Time, his collaboration with Canadian jazz pianist Paul Bley, has been translated into Italian, and after the New York City launch of the book based on his McMaster University thesis, The Battle of the Five Spot, David was commissioned to write the text for a plaque that now marks the site of the legendary Five Spot Café that once hosted jazz greats in the city’s Lower East Side.

Lee’s “Midnight Games” novels, on the other hand, feature rich, scary sci-fi cosmic horror, as a teenage protagonist finds that the horrific extraterrestrials of novelist H.P. Lovecraft are alive and well on the night streets of present-day Hamilton.