marc ribot’s noir

Acclaimed Composer and Guitarist to Perform Evening of Noir-Inspired Music

April 2 Concert Presented by The New School as Part of its First Arts Festival

Marc Ribot

NEW YORK—On Saturday, April 2, The New School will present a performance by acclaimed composer and guitarist Marc Ribot inspired by the quintessential American style of Noir. The performance is part of The New School Arts Festival, taking place April 1-8, which will explore the relevance of Noir and its meaning today. The festival will also include iconic films, hard-boiled storytelling, and graphic art.

Sex! Trash! Violence! Ribot will explore a lonely place: the border between classic noir film scores of the 1940s through 1960’s, and the 1980s no-wave bands who worshipped them. Soundtracks will include re-arrangements of Henry Mancini (Touch of Evil), Andre Previn (Scene of the Crime), Roy Budd (Get Carter), as well as music by the Lounge Lizards, Rootless Cosmopolitans, and new Noir music by the artist.

The New School Arts Festival is free and open to the public, but reservations are recommended. All events are subject to change. For a full calendar of events, please visit www.newschool.edu/artsfestival/noir.

Ribot has released 19 albums under his own name over a 25-year career, exploring everything from the pioneering jazz of Albert Ayler to the Cuban son of Arsenio Rodríguez. “Guitarist Marc Ribot helped Tom Waits refine a new, weird Americana on 1985's Rain Dogs, and since then he's become the go-to guitar guy for all kinds of roots-music adventurers: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Elvis Costello, John Mellencamp” said Rolling Stone.

Additional recording credits include Elton John/Leon Russell’s latest The Union, Solomon Burke, John Lurie’s the Lounge Lizards, Medeski Martin & Wood, Marianne Faithful, Joe Henry, Allen Toussaint, Marisa Monte, Allen Ginsburg, McCoy Tyner, Madeline Peyroux, Nora Jones, The Black Keys, and many others. Ribot works regularly with Grammy® award-winning producer T Bone Burnett and New York composer John Zorn. He has also performed on scores such as Walk The Line, The Kids Are All Right, and The Departed.

About The New School Arts Festival: Noir

From The Maltese Falcon to Blood Simple, Noir embodies a cinematic style of shadowy expressiveness. Coined by a French critic in 1946, the term originally referred to movies depicting a morally ambiguous world of cynical private eyes, lonely gangsters, femme fatales, and the nihilistic novels that inspired them. But with the passage of time, the term has come to suggest the alienation and disorientation of modern life, characterized by stark silhouettes, sexual frankness, stylized emotion, and the absence of sentimentality.

"The Arts Festival reflects the range of artistic and intellectual activity at The New School," said New School President David E. Van Zandt. "What better theme to launch this first event than Noir—a genre that has influenced a number of the arts, from music to literature, film, and the fine and graphic arts."

Organized by James Miller the chair of Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research; Robert LuPone, director of The New School for Drama; and Robert Polito, director of the Writing Program at The New School, program highlights include: a screening of the 1984 classic American neo-Noir Blood Simple (April 4) preceded by a conversation with one of its stars, Academy Award-winning actress Frances McDormand; acclaimed critic Greil Marcus in conversation with filmmaker Todd Haynes (Far from Heaven, I'm Not There) and writer Jon Raymond (Meek’s Cutoff, Old Joy) about their reimagining of the 1941 novel Mildred Pierce (April 7); and cult filmmaker and New School Hirshon Festival Director-in-Residence Guy Maddin presents a screening of Hauntings, his short adaptations of movies by great directors for which the prints have been lost, which he based on plot synopses found in ancient Variety magazines (April 6); a rare screening of the 1913–1914 silent film crime serial Fantomas, followed by a panel discussion with writers and critics Geoffrey O’Brien, Howard Rodman, Luc Sante, and David White (April 5); and an evening of readings by poet and New School Writing Program Director Robert Polito, poet Robert Pinsky and novelist Mary Gaitskill (April 5) that explore the deep undercurrent of Noir in American literature. Pinsky will be accompanied by a live jazz ensemble, which will improvise music to his poems.

The New School Arts Festival is made possible by generous support from the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost, the Dorothy H. Hirshon Film Festival, the Graduate Writing Program, the Riggio Honors Program in Writing & Democracy, and the School for Art, Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design.

The New School is a legendary, progressive university inspiring undergraduates, graduate students and others to catalyze change in an inconstant world. Founded in 1919 as a hub of intellectual freedom by Charles Beard, John Dewey, Thorstein Veblen and others, The New School is a major degree-granting university. Its 10,500 students are enrolled in 88 degree-programs in the humanities, social sciences, design, public administration, and the performing arts. In addition, the university welcomes over 3,500 adult learners in continuing education every year; and holds hundreds of public programs. For more information, please visit www.newschool.edu.

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