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Matan Porat has performed classical and original compositions in some of the most beautiful concert halls on the planet. The word “virtuoso” dots most every piece of press about the Israeli pianist. Yet of all the undignified ditties, it was “Happy Birthday” that revealed a new pathway to the Juilliard-trained Porat circa 2008.
It was a tradition at Vermont’s Marlboro Music Festival (“one of the best chamber music festivals in the U.S.,” Porat says) to musically celebrate any visiting performer with a birthday falling during the event’s seven-week span. The 2008 crop was heavy on Cancers and Leos, and Porat ended up ad-libbing nearly a dozen renditions of “Happy Birthday” in varying styles. Those lunchtime performances sparked festival director Richard Goode to ask Porat about improvising a live score to Fritz Lang’s silent masterpiece Metropolis.
“It was very shocking for me because I never thought of doing something like that, but I immediately jumped on the opportunity,” says Porat, who lives in Berlin. “Metropolis is not the easiest start. In any case, [it] was very revolutionary for me.”
That experiment kicked off 13 years of Porat inventing scores to silent films live, on the fly and around the world, including this month as part of Chamber Music Northwest’s 51st annual Summer Festival. July 12 at the Gresham Arts Plaza will see Porat accompany his favorite Buster Keaton film, Sherlock Jr., plus the 20-minute short The Playhouse (his first go-around with that title). The next night, outside University of Portland’s Franz Hall, Porat scores Keaton’s The General, which he’s accompanied live before—somewhere in the ballpark of 15 times. Both events are free and open to the public.
As opposed to Lang’s thematic weight, Buster Keaton’s 1920s comedies are a welcome challenge to Porat’s deftness, as he’s essentially a sonic collaborator in Keaton’s daring, inimitably gymnastic gags—selling and punctuating the jokes as they hit. Though separated by a century, one master of timing deserves another.
“The innovation [Keaton] is doing in the story and the filming are so ingenious that I have to keep up to this level all the time,” Porat says. “Otherwise, it’s kind of wrong.”
It’s helpful to think of Porat’s improvisation alongside the films as more progressive than random. He’s composed leitmotifs for certain characters that help initiate and ground the live scores. For instance, his opening theme to The General will reliably match the arriving locomotive with frenetic, propulsive movement. But after that, he truly doesn’t know. Like Keaton’s iconic gag from that film, Porat is laying musical track simultaneously to a moving train.
Porat says he appreciates the audience interaction at these screenings, and surely the two outdoor festival shows—with inflatable movie screens and greenspace seating—will be a different scene from tawny concert halls. In fact, the events throw back nicely to the less formal, widely accessible sensation of Keaton’s movies in the early 20th century. Only instead of a local organist playing along in a waistcoat and bowler hat, Oregonians get “one of the most talented classical musicians in the world,” say CMNW artistic directors Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim.
“[Porat] is really funny and has an amazing sense of humor, and that all comes out in his music and his playing,” Chien and Kim stated via email. “He’s a different kind of brain…a savant kind of ability with him. We wanted to bring him here to do and be all these things for our first summer festival as artistic directors.”
Porat will also premiere an original composition, commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest, with the Dover Quartet on July 15 and 16 at Reed College’s Kaul Auditorium. That’ll be festivalgoers’ window into Porat the composer center stage. His improvisation, then, serves as a bridge between the writing and performing, but Porat is happy to do so with no limelight (quite literally) at the film screenings.
“I’m basically, in a way, a tool for the movie to function,” Porat says. “I don’t need to be recognized during the movie because that would divert the attention from what is most interesting—the movie, of course.”
SEE IT: Buster Keaton Movie Nights With Matan Porat take place at Gresham Arts Plaza, 401 NE 2nd St., and University of Portland Franz Patio, 5000 N Willamette Blvd. 8:30 pm July 12 and 13. Free. Chamber Music Northwest Summer Festival, cmnw.org, runs through July 25. $20-$325.
