Getting Ready for upcoming Events!

Johannah has been busy preparing for upcoming events, including the January 26 presentation of Nanook.  Tickets are now available!  Johannah has also been updating our Facebook page with interesting news and links as much as possible, so "Like" us on Facebook and check back often.

Here is the press release Johannah has prepared for Nanook, and we hope to see you there!

Abbe Museum and Reel Pizza
present Film/Live Music Performance

On Saturday, January 26, 2013, the Abbe Museum will present the final installment of a four part film series which has featured Native life in the Arctic.  Unlike the other three films, which were shown at the Abbe, the fourth will take place at Reel Pizza in Bar Harbor.  The classic silent film, Nanook of the North will light up the big screen and the halls of Reel Pizza will ring with live music. This unique combination of silent film and live music will feature the Sumner McKane group, who composed an original score specifically to accompany Nanook of the North. The group is known for creating live “docu-exhibits,” which narrate the scenes in a film through their original music.

Filmed in 1922, Nanook of the North is considered to be the first anthropological documentary film ever made. The filmmaker, Robert. J. Flaherty, spends a year following the lives of an Inuit family, led by Nanook, the head of the family, through their travels and travails enduring an Arctic winter. This film was one of the first 25 films to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for its cultural and historical significance.

The new score, an expansive and expressive original piece of music composed by the Sumner McKane Group, was written meticulously in spring 2008 over a brief and harried 4-week period. The undertaking was part of the Local Score/Silent Film series, presented by One Longfellow Square in Portland. Unlike other performers in the series, the group opted to score the entire film, using no improvised musical elements at all. The group's bravery in this endeavor was rewarded by two successful shows with substantial local press coverage. Since then, the band has played successful shows of Nanook at Slates in Hallowell, Space Gallery in Portland, and the Boothbay Opera House, as well as releasing a 100-CD limited-edition studio recording of Nanook, available online for a very limited time.

The Sumner McKane Group, a modern instrumental music trio, is based in Maine, with guitarist Sumner McKane, bassist Joshua Robbins, and drummer Todd the Rocket Richard residing in Wiscasset, Whitefield, and Westbrook respectively. 

A national audience has already taken notice of this musical work. Host John Diliberto of National Public Radio’s Echoes program has said of the music, "McKane's landscapes are tinged in ambient atmospheres and pulled by an undertow of psychedelia that makes them some of the most unassumingly mind-bending music of the decade... Sumner manages to touch the nostalgic, wistful side of us, without being remotely quaint."

This event is being made possible by Reel Pizza and grants from the Lynam Trust and the Margaret E. Burnham Charitable Trust.  The show starts at 7:00pm, tickets are $10 in advance and $12 at the door. Please call the Abbe Museum at 288-3519 or email johannah@abbemuseum.org to reserve your tickets.