Lachrimae Amantis

During Palaver's second tour, we played an awesome Groupmuse in New York City at an abandoned warehouse where the audience sat in a circle around the group. The closeness of the audience gave our music-making an intimate, alive feeling that's hard to duplicate in a concert hall. a It was a beautiful space to play, and also a beautiful place to film. 

The Lachrimae are a collection of seven pieces that John Dowland composed to explore different kinds of tears. Lachrimae Amantis are Lover's Tears - bittersweet, tender, yearning. Dowland's original score is written for five voices and has two large sections that both repeat. I wanted to use the piece's repetition as an opportunity to portray different colors and dynamics, so I alternatively split the group into small chamber groups and brought the whole group together for a fuller, darker sound.

This was also my first attempt at filming and editing a live concert video. I love the close-up footage - the way that the musicians look at each other, the joy that playing such a simple beautiful piece brings - but I think the vid would have been much stronger if I could have teamed up with one or two more videographers to help capture the musicians and the audience. But, such is life.

My friend Nate Martin and I shot this video on two cameras: the wide angle on Nate's Nikon and the closeups on my Fujifilm XT-2. We captured the audio on three mic's: two stereo mic's placed inside the orchestra circle, and one omni mic, spotting the cellos and basses. I edited the audio on Logic Pro X, and the video on Adobe Premier Pro.