Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 17 March 2012

THE LAST time anything as zany as the Spaghetti Western Orchestra was seen at Eden Court was when the Italian mime artist Ennio Marchetto dressed himself in about a hundred paper costumes in forty minutes. Hardly surprising, then, that the two shows come from the same management stable.

THE SWO is a show that appeals to many audiences – film buffs, comedy fans, nostalgia freaks, creators of sound effects, or even those who came along seeing the word “orchestra” and expecting a serious musical evening (and there were some who confessed to that reason for being there, and all credit to them for staying the course!). There was something for everybody. The Orchestra must have some form of cult following, or else the marketing must have been spot on as the Empire Theatre was packed to the rafters.

Spaghetti Western Orchestra

So what did we get for our ticket money? Five Australians armed with over one hundred instruments, some more musical than others, performing on an ingenuously lit set in a tribute to – or was it a parody of? – the music Ennio Morricone composed for the series of spaghetti western films directed by Sergio Leone that made Clint Eastwood a household name. It was what it said on the tin, but what made it so different and creative was the way the show was delivered.

The show was dominated by music from the big four; A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and Once Upon A Time In The West, all movies from the 1960s. But there were also dips into some of the other films from Morricone’s prodigious output, and to be frank the music is so formulaic that it takes a real film geek to know which music came from which film.

From the outset there was a sense of slapstick between the five musicians, all dressed up as if they were playing bit parts in a western with ghostly white faces and eccentric costumes – or maybe they had absconded from the House of Horrors at the funfair! And they were very loud, with many of the sounds coming from Boris Conley’s synthesiser, balanced by the percussion of Jess Ciampra and the extended drum kit of Graham Leak. Making up the quintet were bass-player Shannon Birchall and Patrick Cronin playing everything that had to be blown from trumpet to ocarina, as well as some plucking on the ukulele, vocals, operating the tape loops and trying to keep some sense of chaotic order.

This was more than just the recreation of a collection of film scores as it brought in many of the tricks of the sound effects team, from creaky doors and winds across the prairie to gunshots and whips and bar-room noises, all introduced into the act with flamboyance and humour. Overall, it was a remarkably accurate reminder of going to the cinema over forty years ago, even if it was a comic pastiche rather than the ambiance of movies that had an element of violence in them.

The audience loved it and went off into the night exhilarated by the expertise and exuberance of this exhibition of virtuosity. There were highlights of course, and if one has to be picked, it would have to be Graham Leak playing the theme from Once Upon A Time In The West on the theremin, an electronic instrument that is a precursor of the Moog synthesiser, which seems to be growing in popularity in a scaled down but more versatile form.

[amazon_carousel widget_type=”ASINList” width=”460″ height=”200″ title=”” market_place=”GB” shuffle_products=”False” show_border=”False” asin=”B00432H2UC,B00004YTXH” /]

© James Munro, 2012

Links

• Spaghetti Western Orchestra