Jessica Mathews / news@whmi.com


Area residents and visitors stepped into the shadows this Halloween season with Nosferatu LIVE at the Hamburg Township Library on Monday night.

It’s “a spine-tingling rock spectacle that breathes new life into the 1922 silent horror masterpiece”.

A little over 100 years ago, Nosferatu, an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, was released. It was the very first vampire film and one of the first horror films ever made. Stoker's heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. However, several prints of the film survived, and it came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre.

Nosferatu LIVE was created by guitarist and composer Paul Bielatowicz (Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy, Neal Morse). The multi-media concert “fuses classic horror with jaw-dropping musicianship and heart-pounding progressive rock”.

Performing an original score live at the library, “Bielatowicz and his band transformed the silent film into a thrilling cinematic experience unlike anything library patrons had ever seen before”.

The Nosferatu LIVE band features the lineup: bassist Mike Dutko (Gary Hoey) and drummer Tobias Ralph (Adrian Belew Power Trio, The Crimson ProjeKCt).

Audiences were immersed in the world of Nosferatu through atmospheric synchronized lighting, while three onstage screens display the 1922 film alongside virtual appearances from an all-star lineup including Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater), Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal (Guns N’ Roses, Sons of Apollo, Asia), Arthur Brown (The Crazy World of Arthur Brown), Dave Bainbridge (Strawbs, Iona), Peter Zay (New Bedford Symphony Orchestra), and Simon Fitzpatrick (ELP Legacy, Jennifer Batten).

Part concert, part film, part Halloween ritual, Nosferatu LIVE was described as “an unforgettable night where classic horror meets electrifying progressive rock”.

The following are comments from people who attended the event:

"Last evening’s Nosferatu event was incredible! Thank you for hosting such a uniquely creative and fun event! I still can’t believe my local library hosted this! What a great and inclusive event that many libraries wouldn’t want to sponsor! I am impressed! Hamburg Library ROCKS!"

"When my friend asked me to go somewhere with her last night, I was like OK, but I didn’t know what I was stepping into. However, that concert last night was incredible. The level of musicianship, the creativity, the comedy kind of mixed with spooky. It was the perfect concert and the library was set up so beautifully. This was spectacular and I just want to thank everybody involved in the planning of it. Please do it again!"

Photos: Nathan Robinson