Sundance is alive with the sound of music

This year's Sundance Film Festival focuses their lens on a topic near and dear to my heart: the role of music in film. To that end, there's all kind of events tying the two art forms together - panels, roundtable discussions, a contest and all sorts of live performances. The first of these performances I'd like to profile is (appropriately enough) the Film.com launch party, January 21st at the Star Bar, featuring The Apples in Stereo and West Indian Girl.

Playlist: Music at Sundance 2007

You may remember Apples frontman Robert Schneider was most recently seen here singing the praises of a certain fake talk news host (see Guitarmaddeonit,) and the latest release from the band (New Magnetic Wonder, coming February 7) is through the new record label from Frodo himself (Elijah Wood,) Simian Records. This sunny psychedelic pop outfit is essentially the last band standing from the influential 90's collective known as Elephant 6, which also featured Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control. Since the subject matter is music in film, I guess it'd be criminal of me not to mention The Apples in Stereo's involvement with the film The Powerpuff Girls, as they contributed a song ("Signal in the Sky.")

West Indian Girl (on Astralwerks) I'm less familiar with, but they're from Los Angeles and have a song called "Hollywood" so I imagine that qualifies them enough. They're also playing in Sundance's 'Music On Main' free concert, on January 25th with Of Montreal, Shiny Toy Guns, and DJ J_Luvv (on Main street, naturally.)

Another music performance on January 24th (6:00 p.m. at Sundance House, The Kimball Art Center,) features Keb Mo, jazz great Terence Blanchard and songwriter Michael Penn. Speaking of Michael Penn, he'll be busy playing elsewhere as well, as every afternoon, running from January 19 through 27, the aforementioned Star Bar will be host to live performances from artists like the aforementioned Penn, folk-rock legend Donovan, Alexi Murdoch, Ron Sexsmith, Silversun Pickups, The Album Leaf, Rosie Thomas, Sparta, Jill Sobule and many more.

Elsewhere, in the festival, will be several music-related programs, the first of which is the fascinating experiment Film2Music, where filmmakers turn the tables and visually score the instrumental album Cinematic from composer Kubilay Üner (click here to see films entered.)

A celebration of music and film occurs January 21st at Sundance House (8:30 p.m,) featuring composers/musicians contributing to this crop of Sundance entries. This includes Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (Once,) Scratch Massive (Broken English), Craig Wedren (The Ten), and M. Ward (The Go-Getter.) And finally, there will also be a roundtable discussion featuring both composers (including George Clinton) and directors, Wednesday, January 24; 11:00 a.m. at Sundance House. Whew....that's a lot of music!

tags: music, film, soundtrack, movies, sundance, sundance film festival, west indian girl, apples in stereo, michael penn, glen hansard, m ward