Len Lye’s first film TUSALAVA (F1861) with a 2009 improvised score by Jonathan Besser.
The score was recorded live at the March 2009 Auckland Arts Festival as part of Besser’s ‘Dogs of Auckland’ festival show. The musicians, improvising freely while interacting with the film, were:
Jonathan Besser: Grand Piano
John Bell: Vibraphone and Percussion
Andrew Pask: Bb clarinet, Bb bass clarinet, and Eb Alto Saxophone with digital audio effects written in ‘MaxMSP’.
“This remarkable animation film was first screened by the London Film Society in 1929 [with] Jack Ellitt’s original piano music [which] has unfortunately been lost. The film imagines the beginnings of life on earth. Single-cell creatures evolve into more complex forms of life. Evolution leads to conflict, and two species fight for supremacy. The title is a Samoan word which suggests that things go full circle. In this film Lye based his style of animation partly on the ancient Aboriginal art of Australia. TUSALAVA is unique as a film example of what art critics describe as “modernist primitivism”. In contrast to the Cubist painters (who were influenced by African art), Lye drew upon traditions of indigenous art from his own region of the world (New Zealand, Australia and Samoa).” - The Len Lye Foundation; www.lenlyefoundation.com/films/tusalava/66/; retrieved 20/06/2016
For TUSALAVA “with alternative music selected by Len Lye, ‘Rhythmic Dance for Two Pianos, Op.30’ by Eugene Goossens (1920) performed by Antony Gray”, see F1861.