Team Up for Nonprofits has graced local venues with terrific live music events for awhile now, but tonight the organization brings some of Seattle’s music’s current shining stars to the SIFF Uptown theater tonight — bigger than life and twice as awesome.
Bands on the Big Screen delivers an impressive handful of local music videos to the Uptown’s environs tonight, beginning at 7 p.m. If, God forbid, you’ve missed a chance to see some (any) of the galaxy of acts on display live, tonight’s fete will give you a terrific opportunity to sample their musical wares.
The night’s Official Big Coup will likely be the world premiere of “Celebrate Tonight,” the new video by local soul hero Allen Stone. Director Jon Jon Augustavo also shot clips for Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” and “Same Love” (the latter also screens during Bands on the Big Screen). Seattle’s hip-hop crew The Physics will also premiere their video for “The Goodbye.”
Many of the clips throw engaging spins on the traditional live-performance video format, like Hey Marseilles’ buoyant dance and handclap-laden presentation of “Rio,” and Tyler Kalberg’s gorgeous black-and-white Sound on the Sound Basement Session with Pickwick. Kalberg’s interpretation of Damien Jurado’s “Museum of Flight,” meantime, juxtaposes band footage with alternately mundane and exotic glimpses of Jurado’s recent European tour. The natural beauty of the Northwest wilderness even serves as an eerily beautiful backdrop for Dark Time Sunshine’s “Never Cry Wolf” and Avatar Darko’s “Feeding my Flame.” Yeah, some of these shorts can be seen on YouTube or Vimeo, but they’re so well-crafted that seeing them on a real live movie screen promises to be pretty amazing.
There’s plenty more where those came from, and Bands on the Big Screen also serves as an impressive calling card for the filmmakers involved, many of whom will be present for a post-screening Q & A.
Tickets, $15 plus fees, are still available. And this being a Team Up for Nonprofits benefit, proceeds will go to benefit another worthy local non-profit (Northwest Folklife, this time out). It all sounds — and looks — like a win-win from this corner.
That Pickwick song is pretty awesome!