THE FILM
David Schulte’s “The Curse and the Symphony” is a short documentary film about Austinite Nathan Felix’s effort to break into the elite world of classical music and see his symphony performed by a full orchestra for the first time. The catch: Nathan Felix is a former punk and pop musician with no formal musical training. It took eight years to compose the 6-movement orchestral symphony, The Curse, The Cross, and the Lion.
After many setbacks, Nathan finally found an orchestra in New York to record his first symphony. Schulte traveled to New York with Nathan and his team and filmed the pressure-filled two days that the orchestra had to rehearse and record the symphony. The tension increases as the days tick by and it appears that Nathan’s dream will once again be snatched away.
The Curse the Cross & the Lion is an adventurous, cinematic symphony by indie-composer, Nathan Felix, that explores 6 thematic movements that span over 28 minutes long and was performed by and written for full symphony orchestra.
THE MUSIC
CCL was written over the course of 8 years while Felix was touring throughout Scandinavia, the Faroe Islands, China, the USA, & Europe with his hybrid indie-rock orchestra, The Noise Revival Orchestra.
With the help of New York via Portugal conductor, Andre Lousada, the two young visionaries sketched out a plan that brought Felix to Fredonia, NY in April of 2012 to record The Curse the Cross & the Lion.
From the dissonant opening crescendo of the self-titled 1st movement, to the brooding yet elegant 3rd movement of Broken Down the Walls, to the Western jangle of Don’t Give It Up, The Curse the Cross & the Lion, injects your soul with a genre-bending musical adventure that pays homage to some of the greats in both film and classical music.