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| The Joystick and The Reins (Collage image :Eve Stainton) |
John Carpenter’s 1982 horror film, The Thing (which starred Kurt Russell) featured a score by Ennio Morricone because Carpenter wanted the film to have a European musical approach. In fact, Carpenter was also a composer and was involved in the final score.
Now the complete score for the film is to receive what is thought to be its first performance in full when Jack Sheen conducts Sinfonia Smith Square at Bold Tendencies, Peckham on 15 and 16 August, 2025.
Morricone’s score will form the musical accompaniment to a new solo work by choreographer and artist Eve Stainton, The Joystick and The Reins, a slow-motion interrogation and artist’s reconstruction inspired by police and riot arrest imagery and 1980s Crime Watch episodes. The Joystick and The Reins explores who is deemed to be, and those who decide what constitutes a ‘threat’ within society, exploring how marginalised groups have been instrumentalised through systems of oppression and authoritarianism.
Morricone’s score was selected to create resonance with Stainton’s mutual exploration of societal suspicion, the construction of threat, and the devastating potential of individual isolation.
This appears to be the first time that the score has been performed in full. The Morricone Estate engaged professional engravers to prepare the score and parts for Eve Stainton and Bold Tendencies. They worked from copies of the manuscript scores of the soundtrack, creating newly engraved materials from the handwritten sources.
Full details from Bold Tendencies.
