As part of an exclusive event for the Maine Film Center, Mark and Les Sorciers Perdus will premier Mark’s new score for the 1928 silent film The Trail of ’98. This is a lesser-known adventure-romance film set during the Klondike Gold Rush, directed by Clarence Brown, and starring Dolores Del Rio and Ralph Forbes. Come and hear Les Sorciers Perdus present the score live with a screening of this historic film!

Mark Tipton – trumpet

Ryan Blotnick – guitar

Tyler Heydolph – bass

Beau Lisy – drums

“My original score for Clarence Brown’s 1928 silent film, The Trail of ’98, offers a blend of vintage and contemporary jazz, classical, and folk music sonorities, as well as sound signifiers, in order to convey the struggle encountered by the Klondike Gold Rush prospectors. The film’s narrative also includes romance, adventure, aspiration, defeat, and betrayal, so there is no shortage of variety in the requisite musical themes that I have composed. Set against the austerity of the Klondike wilderness, the power imbalance between Jack Locastro (Harry Carey) and Berna (Dolores del Rio), as contrasted with the relatively naïve romance between Berna and Larry (Ralph Forbes), creates a potent metaphor for the need for warm-hearted human kindness in the face of an often cold, inegalitarian, and brutal world.”