Tom plays guitar like a thousand bluebirds screaming.: Patti SmithInnovative and influential musician Tom Verlaine will perform his newly written scores in accompaniment to an exemplary collection of avant-garde filmmaking from America and Europe. The scores have been co-commissioned by The Wexner Center for the Arts Film and [VID] Video Department in Columbus, Ohio and Tim Lanza of the Douris Corporation through a grant from the Ohio Arts Council and have been written for films by Man Ray, Fernand Leger, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Dimitri Kirsanoff and collaborative works by Slavko Vorkapich and Robert Florey and the early American experimental filmmakers James Watson and Melville Webber. Tom Verlaine will perform the scores live while the films are being projected. His scores have been written for electric guitar and he will be joined by longtime collaborator, guitarist Jimmy Ripp, for the performance. Each film and accompanying score runs between 10 and 13 minutes, for a total of 80 minutes.Verlaine is a critically acclaimed composer and instrumentalist whose main instrument is the electric guitar. He was the guiding force behind the band Television who, along with such outfits as The Patti Smith Group and The Talking Heads, ushered in a new era of independent American pop music. His recorded output between 1975 and 1992 has consistently earned him critical praise from the music press and community in the United States and abroad. His seven solo recordings have received favorable reviews and his 1992 instrumental record Warm and Cool (Rykodisc) won him the New York Music Award for Best Rock Instrumentalist. After a few years of relative inactivity, Richard Cromelin, in a 1996 article for the Los Angeles Times, hailed Verlaine's reappearance on the music scene as "the return of a visionary artist with his creativity and energy undimmed." Jimmy Ripp, a native New Yorker, is a studio musician who has appeared on over 70 different albums by a variety of artists, including Mick Jagger, Yoko Ono and Taj Mahal. His blues record, Way Past Blue, was the first album released on the House of Blues label in 1995. He has worked on Tom Verlaine's solo projects since 1981. "Tom Verlaine: Music for Film" premiered at St. Ann's in Brooklyn, NY on October 15, 1999, followed by performances at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, OR, the Wisconsin Film Festival, Madison, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the James River Festival of the Moving Image, Richmond, the San Francisco International Film Festival, Experience Music Project in Seattle, The Museums of Fine Art in Houston and Boston, The Warhol Museum/Pittsburgh Filmmakers, as well as in Turin and Cortemaggiore, Italy.The Douris Corporation, exclusive worldwide distributor of The Rohauer Collection, one of the largest and best collections of film art, has organized this project in collaboration with the Wexner Center for the Arts and Tom Verlaine. Along with the films in this program, the Douris Corporation distributes films from around the world dating from 1896 to the 1960's, including the work of Buster Keaton, Douglas Fairbanks, D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, Luis Bunuel, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and motion pictures starring Paul Robeson, Boris Karloff, Joan Crawford, Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Cathrine Deneuve and Marlene Dietrich.The Wexner Center For The Arts is a multi-discipline arts facilities based in Columbus, Ohio and established in 1989. Along with year round programming, the Wexner Center also brings in artists from around the world for residencies, symposiums and lectures. The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this program with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.For additional information, please contact Tim Lanza regarding this program.