According to an old legend, whoever dies at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve must drive Death's carriage for the following year. Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage transforms this haunting premise into a remarkable meditation on regret, redemption and the fragile boundary between life and death. Its pioneering visual effects remain astonishing more than a century later.

 

Just days before Christmas, guitarist José Dias is joined by Liverpool-based multi-reedist and improviser Nick Branton, an active figure in the city's experimental jazz scene. A member of the adventurous quartet KIPPERS and co-organiser of the AMQH improvised music series, Branton regularly works across free improvisation, contemporary jazz and experimental music. For this performance, he brings the rarely heard contralto clarinet, whose extraordinary low register opens up an unusual sonic world alongside Dias's guitar. Together, they create an entirely improvised soundtrack, moving between darkness, tenderness and the unexpected, in a fresh encounter with one of silent cinema's most moving ghost stories.