Page 4 / Sunday, February 13, 2011 Tallahassee Democrat / TLH

Busy young violinist scores a winner for ‘Silents!’ Tallahassee native

Brianna Rhodes com-posed her first piece of music — a string quar-tet — when she was 10 years old. In eighth grade, she arranged a symphony for the Deer Lake Middle School Orchestra and played the solo violin part. And last year, in her senior year of high school, the award-winning Chiles High School Orchestra pre-miered her original composition, “Concepts for String Orchestra and Piano.”

It was the first time she had ever heard a full orchestra play her music.

“That was really cool,” says Rhodes. “It was exhilarating and unreal. It sounded bet-ter than I ever imag-ined it would.”

This week, every-one will be able to hear her music, when her original score for the 12-minute film “The Cameraman’s Revenge” debuts at “Silents!: New Scores for Old Films”

as part of Seven Days of Opening Nights.

Rhodes, a freshman violin performance major at FSU’s College of Music, grew up in Tallahassee. Both her parents are musicians. Her mother teach-es music at Killearn Lakes Elementary School, and her father graduated from FSU with a master’s degree in composition.

“It’s in my blood, I guess,” laughs Rhodes. “I started playing vio-lin when I was 9, and I was in the orchestra in elementary, middle and high school. Plus, I was in all the Tallahas-see Symphony Youth orchestras.”

She is now a substi-tute player for the Tal-lahassee Symphony Orchestra — her first gig as a professional musician — and has played in every TSO concert this season.

“I really enjoy playing in the orchestra. The

physical sensation is a rush of excitement and energy. It feels so great to play,” she says. “I’m not a soloist, though — I have way too much stage fright to be good at that.”

Rhodes prefers the mental work of compo-sition, which she likens to painting, to perform-ing.

“You can prepare it ahead of time, and really create your mas-terpiece,” she says, “Instead of being in the spotlight on stage where anything can go wrong.”

Rhodes hopes to become a double major in performance and composition in her

junior year. She says she prefers to write for musical groups.

“I’m really bad at writing for solo instru-ments,” she says. “It just doesn’t come natu-rally to me. When you work with multiple instruments, you have the sounds of different instruments to work with, all those differ-ent textures. Combin-ing the sounds is a lot easier than having to cram everything into one instrument.”

Sounds of ‘Silents!’

Rhodes, undergrad-uate Alex Shor and graduate student Ford Heacock IV were the

winners of a contest to select composers to cre-ate new scores for clas-sic silent movies. The contest was the brain-child of Seven Days director Steve Mac-Queen and FSU com-position professor Mark Wingate.

Shor wrote a new score for the Bust-er Keaton film “Cops” and Heacock com-posed for a piece called “The Life and Death of a Hollywood Extra: 9413,” which Mac-Queen describes as “a crazy piece of funny/tragic surrealism about the vapidity of film as art.” Rhodes scored the classic silent film “The Cameraman’s Revenge,” by Russian filmmaker Ladislas Starevich.

The three films will be screened during the Seven Days festi-val, with a group of five FSU musicians — play-ing clarinet, violin, cel-lo, keyboard, and per-cussion — performing the new scores live dur-ing the screenings.

“When I first heard about the competition, I was really excited. That’s what I want to do — write film scores,” says Rhodes. “I picked ‘Cameraman’s Revenge’ because it was really funny and unique, and I immediately had a lot

of ideas for it.”The film, an early

example of stop-motion animation done with insects, is a melodrama about two beetles — a married couple — who are unfaithful to each other.

“It was made with real insects that were dead,” says Rhodes. “This crazy filmmaker put wires in their bod-ies so they could stand up and he could pose them. I can’t stand bugs, but this film was so clever that I got over it.”

Like all silent films of that era, “The Cam-eraman’s Revenge” was originally shown with a piano player impro-vising live along with the movie. But Rhodes wanted to write a score that enhanced the film itself, rather than one that just played at the same time.

“I have certain musi-cal motifs and moods for each character, to try to bring out the per-sonalities I see in the insects,” explains Rho-des. “Mrs. Beetle feels a lot guiltier about cheat-ing on her husband. Mr. Beetle is kind of a jerk.”

“The music is full of surprises,” she adds. “At least, I like to think so.”

Rhodes’ eventual goal is to compose for fea-ture films, or possibly write music for video and computer games.

“I think that film scores are the most accessible form of music to people today,” she says. “Not everyone has the patience to listen to a symphony. But give them a movie with it and it becomes easier to understand and relate to the music.

By Randi Atwoodspecial to the DeMocRat

Brianna Rhodes is a freshman violin performance major at FSU who composed her first piece in elementary school.

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TLH / Tallahassee Democrat Sunday, February 13, 2011 / Page 5

Fire chief Cindy Dick gets in on act for literacyA few artful ques-

tions for … fire chief Cindy Dick.

Q: Can you play a musical instrument?

A: Nope, unfortu-nately I can’t. I would love to be able to play the sax. I think that is a cool instrument.

Q: Do you own any original art?

A: Yes, I have a few pieces. I like to buy from local artists. I have a piece from a Pyramid artist. Pyra-mid Studios is a local nonprofit that intro-duces art to adults with developmental disabili-ties. I also have some glass pieces that I pur-chased at “Art in the Park.”

Q: What was the first concert you ever attended?

A: I think the first concert was an orches-tra performance at Wolf Trap National Park for Performing Arts, in Vienna, Va. I was prob-ably around 8 years old. We lived in Vir-ginia at the time and I went with my mother. Otherwise, I distinctly remember a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers concert in Jacksonville, around the age of 16, which was my first con-cert without the par-

ents.Q: What book is

on your nightstand right now?

A: I’m reading “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” by Stieg Lar-sson. Other books-in-waiting on the night-stand are Patricia Cornwell’s “Port Mor-tuary,” Bradley Trevor Greive’s “The Incred-ible Truth about Moth-

ers” and “Pillars of the Earth,” by Ken Follett.

Q: When was the last time you danced?

A: The Bedhead Bet-ty concert at the Ameri-can Legion Hall.

Q: What was the last live performance you saw?

A: “The Color Pur-ple” at the Civic Center Broadway Series.

Q: What movie has most affected you?

A: That’s tough. Shooting from the hip, I’d have to say “Willy Wonka and the Choco-late Factory” (the origi-nal with Gene Wilder, 1971). Cheesy, I know,

but there are a lot of great life lessons in that movie (not to men-tion some awesome singing from the origi-nal Oompa-Loompas).

Q: What was the last thing you made by hand?

A: I like to build things. The last was designing and build-ing my deck and a new shower in my house. I believe carpentry, masonry, etc., can be viewed as a form of art.

Q: When was the last time you were on a stage?

A: The Literacy Vol-

unteers for Leon Coun-ty’s rendition of “The Romantic Legend of Don Quixote: A Knight to Remember” to sup-port community liter-acy.

Q: What artistic talent do you wish you had?

A: I really wish I could sing well. I’m one of those people that knows the words to every song and sings constantly, but, unfor-tunately, I inherited my father’s sad inability to sound good! I shall not let it deter me though. Sing I will!

special to the democrat

MORE ABOUT COCAVisit coca’s web-

sites at www.cocanet.org and www.more-thanyouthought.com. send suggestions for artist profiles, news items, story ideas or fun facts to coca at cultural@cocanet.org.

REID COMPTON/special to the democratFire chief Cindy Dick laughs as she sprays Don Quixote with water during a performance of “The Romantic Legend of Don Quixote: A Knight to Remember” by Literacy Volunteers of Leon County on Jan. 28.

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