Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo will perform a solo suspended guitar score for Buster Keaton’s 1922 silent film Cops at ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival at Krannert Center in Urbana, Illinois, on September 9, 2011.
Ranaldo’s score for Krannert Center will feature the suspended guitar phenomena of this American musician/record producer/visual artist who’s best known as a co-founder of Sonic Youth. Rolling Stone ranked Ranaldo as #33 of its 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, describing his music as “his own language of strange and blissful guitar noise.”
Style-morphing icon Marc Ribot, who has lent his mercurial guitar sounds to collaborations with Robert Plant, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and John Zorn, will share the bill, performing his score to Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, which was commissioned by the New York Guitar Festival. The opening titles to Chaplin’s 1921 masterpiece describe the story as “a picture with a smile, and perhaps a tear,” and the film is notable for its bittersweet combination of comedy and drama. Ribot returns to the festival later that evening for a set featuring his band Los Cubanos Postizos.
Other artists appearing at ELLNORA include Calexico, My Brightest Diamond, Richard Thompson, Daniel Lanois’ Black Dub, Sharon Isbin, Taj Mahal, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Adrian Belew, Robert Randolph, The Tony Rice Unit, Cindy Cashdollar, and many more.
More details on these film projects, the world premiere of Bill Frisell and Bill Morrison’s The Great Flood, and ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival at Krannert Center (September 8-10, 2011) will be released on June 15, 2011. Please visit EllnoraGuitarFestival.com for information on previous festivals and for announcements about the 2011 lineup.
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ABOUT ELLNORA:
Krannert Center for the Performing Arts is situated on the campus of the University of Illinois, in the micro-urban community of Champaign-Urbana, and is North America’s premier university-based performing arts complex. ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival (originally called the Wall to Wall Guitar Festival), held biennially, was launched in 2005 and through its eclectic global mix has presented many of the world’s most influential guitarists and bands, including Buddy Guy, Ani DiFranco, Jerry Douglas, Pepe Romero, John McLaughlin, Vernon Reid, Derek Trucks, Kaki King, Andy Summers, The National, Los Lobos, and the North Mississippi Allstars.
