Projects

WORK documents the recording process of the first in a trilogy of albums by the Buffalo-based new music ensemble, Wooden Cities, grappling with issues of labor, environmental justice, and workplace democracy. The 56-minute documentary features footage captured during the ensemble's summer 2018 recording sessions, as well as Mehrvarz's interviews with the musicians and ensemble director Brendan Fitzgerald. The film also includes animations of two sections of the recorded premiere of Frederic Rzewski's The Price of Oil, made using stop motion techniques and consisting of over 80,000 frames. Also featured are Cornelius Cardew's Red Flag Prelude—an elegiac commemoration of the martyrs of the early labor movement—and Wooden Cities' Chain Gang, a dynamic, structured improvisation.

more info about the film is available on the WORK website

produced by Buffalo Documentary Project and Wooden Cities
co-produced by Morris Scholarship and Fellowship Fund
sponsored by UB Arts Collaboratory
directed by Mani Mehrvarz
music by Wooden Cities
animation by Maryam Muliaee

Wooden Cities performs the score to Live Your Art (2019), a collaborative filmmaking experiment which documents the experience of living and working in Buffalo as an artist. Bringing together four diverse UB artists, the short film is a celebration of creativity across the disciplines. The production team, led by UB filmmaker Mani Mehrvarz—and featuring UB artists Naila Ansari, Julia Anne Cordani, Pam Glick, and Maryam Muliaee—takes cameras into spaces where art is made, and then leads viewers out into the city on a search for sources of inspiration, collaboration and community. Film score composed by Ethan Hayden. A project of the UB Arts Collaboratory, produced by Bronwyn Keenan.

Wooden Cities collaborates with artists from the Starlight Studio & Art Gallery to produce a concert of graphic music. (July 2016)

Wooden Cities participates in a full-day residency with the Greece Olympia Jazz Band, including multiple improvisation workshops with different age groups, and culminating in a joint performance with the jazz band featuring John Zorn's Cobra. (January 2016)

A full program of works by Buffalo composers, including recently composed pieces and reconstructions of pieces from Buffalo's rich history of new music. (Febuary 2014)

Wooden Cities performs live, quasi-improvisatory music to score some classic (and not-so-classic) silent Christmas films. (December 2013-present)