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FEBRUARY 13-19, 2022 WHAT'S UP! 37 'Prince Achmed' Rides Again Multi-genre quartet provides new sounds for 1926 film MONICA HOOPER NWA Democrat-Gazette T he oldest surviving, full- length animated film, "The Adventures of Prince Achmed," from 1926, will be brought to life at 7 p.m. Feb. 17 at the Walton Arts Center with a live score performed by Invoke, a multi-string/ multi-genre quartet from Austin, Texas. The show is part of the 10x10 Arts Series and the Mosaix programming initiative. "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" was directed by Lotte Reiniger, who used silhouette animation, a technique that many say she invented, to show a hero's journey with flying horses, magic and romance based on "One Thousand and One Nights," the widely known collection of Middle Eastern folk tales. Reiniger was from Berlin and, according to The New York Times, her "filmmaking career spanned 60 years, during which she created more than 70 silhouette animation films, including versions of 'Cinderella,' 'Puss in Boots' and 'Hansel and Gretel.'" Invoke — composed of Nick Montopoli, Karl Mitze, Geoff Manyin and Zach Matteson — originally came up with a score for the film when they were commissioned by the Austin Chamber Music Center for a 2018 Chamber Music Festival. "We wanted to find a movie that was a little bit different, and maybe could accommodate a different style," says Zach Matteson, violinist for Invoke. "We gave it a look and were like, 'Wow, this could have been made last year by like an indie animation firm or something like that.' It just felt really fresh. And it didn't have necessarily a pre-determined musical style associated with it." Matteson says that the group approached the project of scoring the film from their own perspective rather than taking any ideas from the previous scores composed for it. While watching the film, some of them for the first time, he says "we actually muted the audio, and watched it, and improvised along with it while we were watching, to make sure we weren't too influenced by any other ideas." He also says that their performance at the Walton Arts Center will be slightly different from the first time they played the score at the 2018 festival. "When we did it in Austin the first time, we actually were accompanied by a small chamber ensemble," Matteson says. "[For the Walton Arts Center Show] we've kind of compacted it into a tour version, which is just us four, but the material and the written materials will stay the same." Invoke's score is already set up to be different from the others; the quartet's music is often described as what it is not because their widely ranging influences run from classical to bluegrass. "We come from a very classical background. All of us met at the University of Maryland while going to school for classical training on our original string quartet instruments: violins, viola and cello," Matteson says. "So that background is always kind of present in our technique. But we have a very wide variety of influences, and also lots of different types of music. He says that their biggest influential style is "Newgrass" which he describes as bluegrass meets classical. He mentioned that as a group, they were influenced by mandolinist Chris Thile (Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek) specifically, his collaborative album called "The Goat Rodeo Sessions" which features Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer and Yo-Yo Ma. He says that listening to that album influenced Invoke as they came together in 2013. "Since then, we've incorporated all sorts of different musical genres," he says — from indie rock to singer/ songwriters to metal — and from their academic study and performance in Javanese gamelan ensembles which Matteson explained as traditional music from Indonesia that uses "metal xylophones, metallophones," and "very intricate rhythms." "I think as we started to improvise more together as a group, that kind of influence of long-form meter and percussion meets classical folk (from Javanese gamelan ensembles) kind of starts slipping in there. So there's some of that happening in Prince Achmed," he says, which he thinks was a natural pairing considering the style of puppetry used to animate the movie. Invoke, a multi-string quartet based out of Austin, Texas, will provide the score for a screening of "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" at 7 p.m. Feb. 17 at the Walton Arts Center as part of the 10x10 Arts Series and the Mosaix programming initiative. From left are Karl Mitze, Geoff Manyin, Zach Matteson and Nick Montopoli. (Courtesy Photo/Nathan Russ) FAYETTEVILLE FAQ 'The Adventures of Prince Achmed' WHEN — 7 p.m. Feb. 17 WHERE — Walton Arts Center in Fayetteville COST — $10 INFO — 443-5600, waltonartscenter.org