Mood Area 52 Presents Nosferatu Soundtrack 2023

Mood Area 52 performs a live score to F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu on Friday, November 1 at The Art House Theater in Eugene at 7:00 PM. This seasoned score blends electric guitar, cello, accordion, bass, horns, toy piano, Moog, and a variety of percussion instruments.

This year Mood Area 52 will open the show with an original soundtrack to Benjamin Christensen's 1921 film “Haxan.”

Mood Area 52 is a Eugene band featuring Michael Roderick on accordion, cornet, and toy piano, Amy Danziger on cello, Billy Barnett on guitars, Dan Schmid on bass, and Don Elkington on drums.

"Nosferatu" was directed by F.W. Murnau and is considered one of the classics of German expressionist style. It was loosely based on the novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker and was remade in 1979 by Werner Herzog. In 2000 it inspired the film "Shadow of the Vampire," which was a take on the mysteriousness that surrounded the original film's star, Max Schreck. Mood Area 52 has performed live scores to many other films including “La Jette,” “The Triplets of Bellville,” “Sunset Boulevard,” and numerous Buster Keaton shorts.
Roderick, the band's primary composer, said that he chose to score "Nosferatu" because of its graphic beauty and also because it is one of his favorite films. The score has evolved with each performance. The majority of the music is based in the tango tradition, which has a lot of tense overtones and can be pretty spooky. For this score Mood Area 52 has taken that element and explored the possibilities of exaggerating those qualities.

Roderick said that the score utilizes a degree of jazz improvisational theory as well as fixed themes for each character and certain plot elements.

From The Willamette Week BY AMY MCULLOUGH 2007

“As ghouls and mice, starlets and beatniks filed into the hall, Michael Roderick’s Eugene-based, klezmer-tinged neo-tango ensemble, Mood Area 52 in the evening. Roderick, seated on a tiny stool and donning a sort of mad circus ringleader getup (tailored suit, dark-circled eyes, tall hat, unruly beard), teetered on the edge of the stage, roiling accordion in hand. Later, he took to shouting chanty verses at the crowd, channeling the gruff spirit of Isaac Brock from Modest Mouse’s “March Into the Sea.” When Nosferatu finally began, the band melted skillfully into the background; it was so subtle I could have sworn actual sound effects, like creaking-door and wind noises, were part of the film, even though I knew better. But Mood Area 52—which has also lent its sound (a melding of tango with everything from electronic beats and surf guitar to Roderick’s masterfully played cornet) to British sci-fi flick La Jetée and several Buster Keaton shorts—also swelled and shattered at all the right moments.”