RPM Orchestra is a proto-Industrial Americana music quintet based in Phoenix, Arizona. The orchestra composes and performs original scores to accompany films of the Silent Era, provides musical scores in collaborative multidisciplinary performances, records soundtrack music for contemporary films, and regularly performs at various music venues.
Origins and history
Started in late 2008 as a studio project by Pete Petrisko, the orchestra transformed into a live multiple-member ensemble in 2009. Its line-up varied, between three and seven musicians, until 2012, when group membership solidified with Petrisko, Jim Dustan, Jocelyn Ruiz, and Vic Void playing together regularly. Erik Hunter joined in 2014, officially making the ensemble a quintet. Cited as a "band staffed by futurists and dadaists who take the sounds of the past and filter them into the heads of today's audiences", the orchestra is most identified with dieselpunk music - combining elements of Jazz, Swing, and Bluegrass commonly found during the Diesel Era, with its own unique instrumentation and avant-garde composition. Additionally, it draws from the "noise" aesthetic of Proto-Industrial music harkening back to the Russian avant-garde period. The orchestra favors Electroacoustic music and Acousmatic sound techniques, and the use of contact microphones, in addition to traditional instruments, when creating elements of its music. Its eclectic sound has not gone unnoticed, RPM Orchestra holds distinction as the "Oddest Band in Phoenix". Best known for composing original scores to accompany films of the Silent Era, performed in front of a theater audience during screenings, RPM Orchestra was awarded Best of Phoenix 2018 - Best Live Accompaniment by Phoenix New Times, which wrote, "Combining old-timey instrumentation with radio sounds, haunting samples, and modern noise, RPM creates compelling and timeless soundscapes."
Fever Broke at Five Past the Hour - a film short by Pete Petrisko
Multidisciplinary performances
BUTOH + MUSIC. A Butoh dance and music collaboration with choreographer/dancer Debra Minghi, performed live as part of Phoenix's Art Detour 24. The performance was recorded by several cameras, including audience cellphones, and edited into a stand-alone film by particledots.
Faust A multidisciplinary silent film performance with Dulce Dance, and poets Jack Evans and Ernesto Moncada.
Animalogue A performance choreographed by Debra Minghi, three dancers combining elements of classical ballet, animal posturing, and folklorico dance, with a live musical score by RPM Orchestra. Multicultural in scope and primal by nature; it examined animal hierarchy, social status control issues, gender politics with elements of our analog past transformed into our digital future. This performance was funded via the National Endowment for the Arts' Our Town grant program, as part of Roosevelt Row CDC's A.R.T.S. project series.
Marching In CirclesMarching Band A multi-location marching performance, in which the band visited & played in three distinct districts in Phoenix on the same night.
