Among the many exciting New movie releases 2023 hitting theaters this week is great biopic about a black musician which you have probably never heard of. Gentleman tells the largely unknown story of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who was a French Creole conductor at the court of Marie Antoinette before being involved in the French Revolution. When Kelvin Harrison Jr. played the historical character in Gentlemanhe explained to Gossipify why he was inspired by more contemporary artists like Mariah Carey and Prince.
while you do it Gentleman, Harrison Jr. studied the violin seven hours a day to become a virtuoso and composer. After much of it was destroyed in the Napoleonic era, only a few pieces of Joseph Bologna’s original works remained. During our interview (also above), the actor shared what he was able to glean from his interpretation of the music he listened to. In his words:
One of the first stages of preparation is just listening to the remaining tracks and recordings and trying to figure out what instinctively came out of me listening to them. What was he listening to? Was she listening to someone who was really traumatized by her past? Was he listening to someone who was trying to get over certain things? Where was the tension in the tracks? And, even as if it were a show. You start to see him playing those extremely elusive notes that are up there on the board. And you say, well, he’s a showman. He is someone who is there to put on a show. It’s like when Mariah Carey plays in the treble, she puts on a show, she says, I can do this, right? And I think that says a lot about her character. So music was huge to me and it defined who Joseph was.
Of course, Kelvin Harrison Jr. didn’t get to meet Joseph Bologna or access many of the man’s records, but listening to his music gave him plenty of work to imagine what that might have been like. The actor realized that the composer was a “cocky”, and how Mariah Carey, singer of “All I want for Christmas” fact of his discography, he has not hesitated to offer impressive musical moments in his work. Harrison also told us this:
I used to listen to Prince a lot, “Darling Nikki” was the title track of my playlist. There was something so sultry and I really wanted to bring out that rock star sensuality and brutality, all that Prince had for us in this song. And, you know, I had a really cool playlist for this movie. I think a lot of people would be a little surprised, like a lot of Kodak Black and like Lil Wayne and Drake and random stuff like that. Just above the music, to be honest. Because it has something like “I am the man of the city”. So I wanted to have that energy.
While one might think that the Films by Kelvin Harrison Jr. the actor would look to other classic composers of the time, instead choosing modern black artists like Prince, Kodak Black, Lil Wayne, and Drake to help him contextualize the virtuoso for himself and enter the composer’s state of mind. The actor is fully aware of how extraordinary he is GentlemanThe era of, but it seems like it really allowed him to embody the historical figure in his own way.
Joseph Bologne was the illegitimate son of a Senegalese servant and French plantation owner who found rank in the French nobility. In the film, he aspires to compose and present his original work, where he meets Marie-Joséphine de Comarieu de Montalembert de Samara Weaving. They secretly fall in love even though it is illegal for them to do so.
Gentleman It’s a really interesting biopic, so you’ll want to watch the movie about the forgotten classical composer. you can see Gentleman in theaters this Friday April 21 and discover the ReelBlend podcast interview with the Gentleman writer and director .
Source: Cinemablend
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