Matthew Nolan is a Dublin based musician, music curator, and academic. He was the founder and artistic director of 3epkano from 2004 to 2015, an instrumental music ensemble who specialised in the production of original music for movies from the silent era.
Over the last 10 years, he has been involved in producing new music for several award winning Irish films including Exile in Hell, Runners, and Somewhere Down the Line. He teaches Film Studies at Dublin Business School and Trinity College Dublin. Ongoing and current projects include Dracula and People on Sunday.
Matthew has also worked on commissions from a range of performing arts institutions and arts organisations, including: The Audi Dublin International Film Festival, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, National Gallery of Art, Cork and Dublin French Film Festivals, Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, Cork Midsummer Festival, Film Society at Lincoln Centre in New York, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
He likened the films to paintings, and described watching them as ‘a little like daydreaming’. His concerns about information overload even in the 1970’s were uniquely prescient
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1921 I 132mins I Rex Ingram I USA
In celebration of internationally renowned Irishman and film director Rex Ingram who emigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1911, a rare screening of the 1921 American silent epic war film will take place in the spectacular gothic surroundings of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Based on the Spanish novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, it was adapted for the screen by June Mathis. The film stars Pomeroy Cannon, Josef Swickard, Bridgetta Clark, Rudolph Valentino, Wallace Beery, and Alice Terry.
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1932 I 72mins I Carl Theodor Dreyer I Germany & France
With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer channelled his genius for creating mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, unsettling imagery into the horror genre. Adapted from the work of Sheridan Le Fanu, the result—a chilling film about a student of the occult who encounters supernatural haunts and local evildoers in a village outside of Paris—is nearly unclassifiable. A host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds create a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, Vampyr is one of cinema’s great nightmares.
Supported by the Goethe-Institut Ireland
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1926 I Japan I Teinosuke Kinugasa I 60mins
A rare screening of arguably the most important Asian film from the silent era, in the beautiful surroundings of the Chapel at Trinity College Dublin. This presentation will be accompanied by a new score produced by acclaimed Irish musicians and composers Matthew Nolan and Seán Mac Erlaine in collaboration with London based shakuhachi (Japanese flute) master, Clive Bell.
March 2017 marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Ireland and Japan.
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Matthew works as a freelance music programmer and curator. He established the WIRED music strand at the Kilkenny Arts Festival, which ran from 2008 until 2013. During this time he brought an array of indie music luminaries to perform in the Marble City. They include, naming but a few: Spiritualized, Lisa Hannigan, Agnes Obel, Damo Suzuki, Tindersticks, Amiina, Low, Rachel Grimes, The Fall, James Vincent McMorrow, The Divine Comedy, The Sea and Cake, Erik Friedlander, Jape, and A Winged Victory for the Sullen.
Since 2013 he has run Note Productions, a music promotion company dedicated to expanding the Irish audience for jazz, world music, electronic and contemporary classical music. During his time with Note Productions, Matthew has brought some of the most important figures in contemporary music to play in Dublin, including acts such as The Bad Plus, Brad Mehldau, Marc Copland, Jeff Ballard, Andy Sheppard, Ernst Reijseger, and Evan Parker.