Cameron Graham: Sweet People

Early film studios withheld their actors' names, fearing the power and financial demands that recognition would bring. Actress Florence Lawrence was the first to break this arrangement, founding her own production studio, introducing the actor credit and, with it, the era of the film star. Her fame was built entirely on her image; when talkies became the dominant form, her acting career had already slowed, her voice never having fully featured in a film. She was a massively visible and influential screen actor whose voice was never heard. Sweet People takes the symbolic yet silent role of Lawrence as a point of departure, reflecting on the lure and melancholy of the American cinema apparatus, evoking and skewing the strange afterlives of its images and performers. The work is part intermedia theatre, part concerto for sensory percussion, ensemble and interactive moving image. It stumbles and slips between the melancholic, janky setting of the Nickelodeon and the metallic synthesis of the platform feed. Regenerated image and unmoored sound accumulate, loop and misalign, assembling and dismantling a studio scene from the wrong time and space. Thanks to the performers: Chihiro, Eliza, Evangeline and Sana and to Joyce Lam for creating the space for this early experiment to happen in this way. Deep thanks to Klara Kofen for the Murder Ballad text and your support throughout, to Okamirufu for TouchDesigner advice and to James Oldham for directing the initial but invaluable choir rehearsal. Note by Cameron Graham Performers Chihiro Ono violin Evangeline Tang double bass Sana Abu-Jabir percussion Cameron Graham sensory percussion / electronics Eliza McCarthy keyboard #LondonSymphonyOrchestra #ContemporaryMusic #ChamberMusic ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subscribe to the LSO's channel: http://bit.ly/LSOsubscribe Subscribe to LSO newsletter: https://smarturl.it/lsonewsletter Follow the LSO on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/londonsymphonyorchestra Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/londonsymphonyorchestra TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@londonsymphonyorchestra Twitter: https://twitter.com/londonsymphony LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/london-symphony-orchestra/ Website: https://lso.co.uk/ Apple Music: http://geni.us/yH0sXY Spotify: http://spoti.fi/291cCk0 LSO Live: https://lsolive.lso.co.uk/