Bad Boy Made Good: The Revival of George Antheil's 1924 Ballet Mécanique

"Bad Boy Made Good" is the story of one of the 20th century's most notorious works of music, George Antheil's 1924 "Ballet mécanique," which not only presaged many important musical movements, but was so technologically advanced that it could not be performed during the composer's lifetime. Calling for 9 percussionists, 2 pianists, 3 airplane propellers, 7 electric bells, a siren, and 16 synchronized player pianos, it wasn't until 1999, with the assistance of a computer, a sampler, and 16 MIDI-controlled Disklavier player pianos, that Lehrman, a composer who teaches in the Multimedia Arts program, was able to realise the work as the composer envisioned it. It has since been performed in Symphony Hall, Carnegie Hall, and in Germany, Belgium, Holland, and Montreal.
Antheil himself was a very colourful virtuoso pianist from New Jersey who took Europe by storm in the 1920s. He hung out in Paris with Joyce, Pound, Picasso, Hemingway, and Stravinsky. But his career took a nosedive after a well-publicized disaster at Carnegie Hall, and never recovered. After the screening of BAD BOY MADE GOOD there is a screening of BALLET MECANIQUE with the original score by George Anthiel