Not many people have seen “Anna,” my short narrative film from last year. It’s a bit long for the internet with a running time of 22 minutes. So you would have had to have seen it one of the various screenings last Spring.
The main title theme was a little melody that had been thumping away in my head since 1987. I have a number of fairly incompetent recordings of it from that time, notably with violinist Korine Fujiwara (who now has a proper career). I was fairly unaware of minimalism at the time, only knowing what I could glean from Tuxedomoon, to which I was fairly devoted at the time. The obvious Nymanisms in the final version are intended, but really did have their origin in my total naivete – I’m fairly sure I had picked up this kind of thing by osmosis, and probably more from Glass than anyone else; I had not yet heard Nyman.
You can imagine me in 1987, banging out the 4/4 and then 7/4 rhythm on a Casio keyboard with the relentless pursuit of a chimpanzee and you will get the picture. Certainly Korine had that impression as she played along with my epic, 20-minute take. My only real instruction to her: do not play pizzicato. You can tell when she gets sick of it during the take because the violin starts to plunk, plunk, plunk…
Here are the proper tracks:
Hey Tim….
Blast from the past. How in the world I have ended up on this page will forever be unknown to me. But here I am, (proper career????? lol good one!) I am very intrigued and would love to hear those 1987 takes now!
Best to you,
K