Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau - Olivier Mellano

For Printemps de septembre this year, the Nomadic Nights will feature a new cineconcert. Olivier Mellano, a ubiquitous figure in the budding French independent music scene, will pit himself against the sublime images of Friedrich Willhelm Murnau’s Sunrise.

A veritable cinematographic poem, Murnau’s Sunrise is without doubt his most impressive film. It tells the story of a peasant who, seduced by scheming femme fatale from the city, plans to murder his wife as he takes a walk by a lake. Stricken with conscience, he aborts his plan at the last minute. The woman flees back to the city, where her husband rejoins her shortly afterwards and their love is reborn. Olivier Mellano has chosen to pay homage to Murnau’s masterpiece with this cineconcert. A guitarist and music teacher, born in Rennes in 1971, he has forged a strong reputation through his many collaborations with some of the French music scene’s biggest names, including Yann Tiersen, Dominique A, Miossec, and Laetitia Sherriff. But Mellano is first and foremost an innovativecomposer and arranger. The two albums released by his group Mobiil, an unusual electro-pop project, have met with notable critical success in both France and Spain. The group has “invented a new language, at once knowing and nonchalant, disenchanted and light, electronic and organic” (Les Inrockuptibles). In October 2005, Mellano will release an album on Naïve Classique consisting of pieces for harpsichord and organ, string quartets, and vocal works: an album somewhere between baroque and contemporary music, the result of a career rich in eclectic collaborations. The compositions on that album form the basis of the music that Mellano will create for the cineconcert, for which he will be accompanied by a harpsichordist.