Silent Film Music and other Sounding Off

ESTHER, a one-act opera for families

2011-10-12T13:40:00.005-04:00

Hi, it's been a while, and I'll have more to say soon about the festivals I've been performing at: Denver, Pordenone, and the coming shows at MoMA, MOMI and the Houston Cinema Arts Festival, but right now I'd like to invite readers to click on this link to my current Kickstarter project and pledge any amount, large or small, towards the production and DVD of my opera ESTHER, which will return to the stage next year in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the founding of Hadassah.

ESTHER Is a very kid-friendly opera, and tells in simple terms the well-known Bible story of a Jewish girl who risks her life to reveal her identity to the Persian king Ahashuerus to save her people. Watch a video introduction and hear excerpts here:

Happy 90th, Dad!

2011-07-23T13:49:00.024-04:00

Gene Sosin, May 25, 1925

July 24, 2011. Hard to believe it's been 90 years since my dad was born. He has lived through the Roaring 20's, the Depression, World War II, the Howdy Doody show (my folks got me into the Peanut Gallery when I was 5), Tic-Tac-Dough (he won some good money, then was a casualty of the quiz-show scandals as his opponent was fed answers), the Beatles (Dad donned a great wig at one memorable party). Owned an Austin, a Dodge, a Chevy, a Rambler, a few Peugeots, Oldsmobiles, He grew a beard and ditched it. He got a toupee and ditched it. But he never ditched his youthful outlook on life. He looks nowhere near his age, and though he walks with a cane a lot these days, his mind is sharp and his wit quick. He takes pride in the captions he regularly submits to the New Yorker cartoon competitions, and is a whiz at the Sunday puzzle on NPR, writing song lyrics for family get-togethers, and telling great jokes. He played bridge and tennis for years, and has a phenomenal memory for music, poetry, details of conversations and memories of the many trips we took abroad.

He and Mom took us to Munich for a few years in the mid-60's with his longtime job at Radio Liberty, and thanks to him and Mom we learned some German, how to ski, traveled all over Europe, went to innumerable fantastic concerts, met Rostropovich, Marceau, Jessye Norman, Stokowski, and other notables.

But Dad himself is notable. Born in Brooklyn, he was the valedictorian of his Flushing High School class, a Latin scholar, Phi Beta Kappa at Columbia where he majored in French. During the war he joined the Navy, went to the Japanese Language School in Boulder and worked in D.C. decoding secret messages. After the war he went back to Columbia and got a Masters in Russian, meeting my mom in a Dosteovsky class, as they have often recounted. After a short stint at the Voice of America, he joined the fledgling station Radio Liberation in 1952. It went on the air on March 5, 1953, coincidentally the day that both Stalin and Prokofiev died. In 1959 he resigned so he could go to Russia to do research for his dissertation on Soviet children's theater. Of course he got his job back; it was a precautionary measure, as he had been attacked personally in both Pravda and Izvestia!

Dad was one of the main figures at Radio Liberty for 30 years, first in programming and then Director of Broadcast Planning. Under his leadership the station broadcast in sixteen languages to the people of the Soviet Union. His book, Sparks of Liberty, is a remarkable account of his time at the station, which spanned the entire duration of the Cold War, and includes photos of the many personalities that broadcast on RL over the years, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Louis Armstrong.

He has contributed many book reviews and articles to such publications as the New Leader, the NY TImes, and the Saturday Review. But I think his most important contribution during his long lifetime has been the work he and Mom have done in helping emigrés, many of them Soviet Jews, many of whom became dear friends. Mom and Dad interviewed displaced persons for the Army during their first stay in Munich from 1950-1951, just after they got married and just before I was born. They were on the board of NYANA, the New York Association of New Americans, and have always been extremely generous and gracious hosts to dozens, if not hundreds, of immigrants and exiles.

No dinner at their house, either in Rye, Munich or White Plains, has ever been bereft of talk of people they have just met, or have corresponded with, or heard at a lecture (they are both intrepid lecture and concert attendees, sometimes three a day, in addition to having lectured in many different arenas themselves). I can't count the number of times my sister and I sat (and sometimes fidgeted) at the dining room table while my folks conversed in animated Russian (or German, or French) with the latest arrival, or a colleague from a university language department.

As a son, I have wonderful memories of our family trips to Florida, Williamsburg, and over to England, Holland, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austira, Israel, and Greece. I remember well our childhood games, from baseball in the back yard, to sledding down Hill Street in Rye and being pulled back up to our house at the top of the hill, which at one point gave Dad a nice case of bursitis. He commuted into NYC for many years and I would wait for him on a stone ledge outside our house, running to meet him when he walked up the hill. He told great bedtime stories, which I absorbed and then carried on the tradition with our son Nick, and am starting to do with our baby Mollie. Dad and Mom love being grandparents to both of them, and we have been fortunate to have them near enough to visit often these past two decades, sleeping over, hanging out, being fed delicious meals, and watching the latest clips that Dad has taped from his TV interview show, or an installment of Jeopardy, or a classic mystery.
Dad is always ready with clippings from the print media: the Times, the New Leader, and his comments are always insightful and informed.

My folks have been members of Community Synagogue in Rye NY since its founding in 1950 by my grandparents among others, and have been active in all phases of its religious and social life. Dad did not have a religious upbringing but was Bar Mitzvah at the age of 83, and studied Hebrew in adult ed classes.

His 90th birthday is in no way a culmination of his long, productive life, it's an important milestone but only a momentary pause in what seems could continue to be a joyous and fruitful life for many years to come, even, as we always say in our family, biz hunderd zwanzig yor!

Here he is at home a month ago, telling some of his favorite Soviet jokes at my request. Happy Birthday, Dad, I love you always.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLLWxKXHPHc

Now or Never premieres in San Francisco

2011-02-21T22:12:00.004-05:00

After three days of rehearsals by the members of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra, NOW OR NEVER received its first performance Friday night at the Herbst Theater in San Fran. Conductor Ben Simon led eight excellent wind and brass players for the 40-minute silent comedy with Harold Lloyd, and I got to sit back for a change and enjoy the film with the several hundred concertgoers who came out on a miserable night to hear sublime music by Stravinsky, a lovely, delicate, new piece by Berkeley composer Cindy Cox, and then my octet. It went marvelously, and I heard that the next two performances were even better, in Palo Alto and Berkeley. Tonight they finish the series in Vallejo. I hope to have a recording to post soon.

FANTOMAS at Yale

2011-02-13T07:39:00.004-05:00

Friday night I loaded the Outback with two each of Rolands, keyboard stands, music stands, lights, cables, one new lovely Groove Tube stereo amp, and drove to Yale for a marathon screening of Feuillade's 1913 serial FANTOMAS. Nicole Thomas, who is my new colleague and neighbor in NW CT, packed her lovely French accordion, drove down with her partner Malcolm and met me there. And together we improvised for something like 6 hours of intrigue, murder, robbery, and other dirty doings. An audience of film scholars and local folks filled the Whitney Humanities Building for the first few hours, and by midnight the crowd had thinned, but everyone enjoyed the event, which included a superb dinner, and many donned masks or beards and mustaches supplied by Prof. Dudley Andrew, who headed the weekend-long seminar. Tom Gunning spoke with illustrated slides about Fantomas at the beginning of the afternoon.

Here's an excerpt from the screening:

UPSTREAM at MoMI

2011-01-31T18:03:00.000-05:00

Performed an updated version of my UPSTREAM score at the Museum of the Moving Image last night. Joanna wrote fun lyrics for the title song, and I had about 10 other themes for characters that wove in and out, played by violinist Susan Heerema, clarinetist/cellist David Tasgal, and drummer Ken Lauber. Joanna also sang a few other songs as part of the score, including "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "Oh, You Beautiful Doll," and we all chimed in on "Auld Lang Syne" when the title card for the song came up. John Ford's direction is lively, the characters are varied and delightful, and the audience laughed a lot.

Now or Never, an octet for a Harold Lloyd film

2011-01-31T18:02:00.000-05:00

FInished scoring the Harold Lloyd comedy NOW OR NEVER for wind/brass octet. Performances in the Bay area Feb. 18-21, tell your friends! Free! San Francisco Chamber Orchestra members. Score will be available for purchase after the kinks get worked out, and playable by advanced high school musicians and up, a mixture of 20's jazz and classical styles. I will post excerpts in days to come.

The Day Before Christmas (Sosin and Seaton)

2010-12-12T11:20:00.002-05:00

Happy Holidays, everyone! In 1995 Duain Wolfe, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Chorus and the Colorado Symphony Chorus, commissioned an a cappella holiday piece from us that he has repeated in two subsequent editions of the CSO "Welcome Yule" concerts, including last year's "Best of" program. Here is a recording of the piece made this month by the Philharmonic Chorus of Madison WI under Patrick Gorman. Other performances are starting to take place around the country. Enjoy!

An Interview with Pianist Garrick Ohlsson

2010-09-25T21:34:00.002-04:00

This year the renowned pianist Garrick Ohlsson is presenting a series of programs around the country to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Chopin. In 1970 Ohlsson became the only American ever to win the prestigious International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw and in the intervening years has also won a worldwide audience for his superb interpretations of a formidable list of concerti, the complete sonatas of Beethoven, and a wealth of chamber music with leading artists.

I first heard Ohlsson over forty years ago when at the age of 17 he played the Liszt Concerto No. 1, winning a young artists' competition in Westchester County NY, and have followed his career ever since, from the tryouts for his New York debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the stunning victory in Warsaw and then on to join the top echelon of today's musicians.

In a telephone interview just prior to his sold-out Chopin recitals at Tanglewood in August 2010, Ohlsson spoke about a number of facets of Chopin's music that have made it so enduring and significant to concertgoers and scholars alike.

GO: What I attempt to do when I make a Chopin program is to try to show his amazing variety. He suffers, like all great composers, from a sort of stereotypical response. When we think of Beethoven we think of him shaking his fist at the heavens and being triumphant—from darkness to light—over physical suffering. With Chopin you tend to think of how exquisitely beautiful his music is, you know, people's eyes roll back in their heads and they clasp their hearts, all of which is absolutely appropriate to his glorious music. But there's always much more to these great masters than we tend to think of, unless we know them well. So I try to show as much range as possible, and variations in the style.

For example, this first program is constructed fairly cannily, if I may compliment myself, because one of the basic canards was that Chopin wrote in small forms, which is true, but actually, in his Scherzos and Ballades— if you accept them as large forms as I do—the Fantasy, the Barcarolle, a few other pieces; many of his actual individual movements are longer than Beethoven sonata movements, and absolutely masterfully handled, so I wanted to inject a couple of those. So the first program begins conversationally with the Impromptu in F sharp, which is a work of ultimate genius, but it's hard to describe why.

And then it gets more conversational but more intense with the A flat Ballade—we have a larger work in there already. And then the Fantasy in F minor is a 12-minute segment which is actually perhaps his most publicly rhetorical piece. I mean here he's almost putting on a Liszt costume and orating to the multitudes. The Nocturnes—why, I don't know, I just decided to... once again, variations. One of the great things about Chopin is weaving that sense of a Persian carpet, of different moods and textures, and I felt that one of those was the C sharp minor Scherzo, it's highly dramatic and a large piece.

The 24 Preludes, of course, do not have to be played together, Chopin never said so, he was not very compulsive about these things—

DS: Any more than the Well-Tempered Clavier.

GO: Exactly. But it's become kind of à la mode since World War II pretty much, and it turns out that the 24 Preludes in all the major and minor keys form an incredible kind of cycle in a way, because although Chopin never said—you know they function in pairs, where the major and minor seem to answer each other, and sometimes they seem to answer each other in larger spheres. I won't carry this cyclical idea too far, because Chopin didn't state it, but it is an incredible range, and these 24 small pieces turn into 40 minutes of a very large vision of who he is as a creator. I mean if some catastrophe were to befall our civilization and all of Chopin were destroyed except the Preludes, we'd still have virtually all of him. It shows everything, from the most exquisite melodic fragment to the most aphoristic to the most demonic intensity, to the greatest power—

DS: The D minor, the B flat minor—

GO: Right, plus it's really pretty music. Because you know we tend to think of him as the greatest pastry chef among composers, and he probably is that. But that surface gorgeousness sometimes hides the fact that he's a great structural master, an absolute contrapuntal master. Charles Rosen wrote a really clever thing in a recent piece in the New York Review of Books: he wrote that Gluck was the German master who wrote Italian music in Paris, and Chopin was the Polish composer living in Paris who was the absoulute master of German and Italian forms, and managed to achieve a unique synthesis. In other words he wrote melodies that surpassed the bel canto masters, but he supported them with a Bach- and Mozartian contrapuntal mastery that no Italian opera composer of the time dreamt of.

He constantly mixes his metaphors, for example in the Mazurkas he may write a very rustic outer section with an Italian middle section. Or sometimes in the later Mazurkas he starts writing fugal practices which he never does anywhere else. Because if he called something a Mazurka it doesn't mean he was writing a country dance; he was much less simple-minded than that.

The second program: it's harder to string any logic together out of this one, let me tell you. One of the several forms Chopin really went crazy over was the Nocturnes, which began with John Field, who used an extended Alberti bass with an Italian singing melody above, but all you have to do is compare any Field Nocturne to the very first one of Chopin to show what a truly almost drug-induced trance can be like. That first Nocturne starts—he was probably 20 when he wrote it. It weaves its magic incomparably, it puts you in a very different world in a very short space. What a banal thing to say, but there it is. The Scherzo [No. 4 in E] and the [G minor] Ballade are among his greatest creations. The Ballade in G Minor is one that's particularly meaningful to me, because I heard Rubinstein play it when I was nine, in an all-Chopin recital at Carnegie, and I remember getting goose pimples with that first theme, and thinking that that was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard in my life, and then of course the second theme happened and I didn't know what to do with myself!

DS: When did you play that for the first time?

GO: Oh, that? Long time ago, probably when I was sixteen or something, a lifelong companion. If we had time for a musicological dissertation, a formal analysis of that piece would really wreck the brains of most people in the 19th or 20th centuries. I mean, how does he get from—OK, he gets from g minor to Eb. OK, how perfectly logically 40 seconds later does the the theme in Eb have a Wagnerian effulgence in A major, and how do we get here and how do we get back to Eb? There's so much music that happens instead that we're no longer astonished by it. When you just really look at what the composer has done, when any great composer writes music, it's pretty amazing.

The Variations, Op. 12, that's just a rarity, I wanted to throw in something delightful and not particularly important, but very, very brilliant. It's based on this theme by Halévy. That is a cream puff, I must say, but it also has a beautiful little nocturne in it, and it's just incredible ingeniousness. And of course the Sonata in B minor is one of the greatest of all pieces. I mean if you ever had to have someone give testimony to Chopin's gifts as a melodic writer, look at the second subject of the first movement. It's a 50-bar phrase that never repeats itself, except for one phrase internally. This gift of writing endless melody—Chopin had this to a degree matched only probably by, who? Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Dvorak occasionally, Tchaikovsky occasionally—that ability to soar on a purely melodic inspiration, and that's pretty good. I think the third movement of that is one of his most profound nocturnes.

DS: Are you doing these programs anywhere else other than Tanglewood?

GO: This first program I've been playing in many places since January. I'm doing four at Lincoln Center. I did two in February and March, and I'm doing two in November and December, and [Tanglewood] program 2 is sort of a combo of Lincoln Center programs 2 and 3.

Hear excerpts from Ohlsson's performances at the 1970 Chopin Competition at:

http://www.opus3artists.com/artists/garrick-ohlsson

Upcoming performance dates:

Thurs. Sept 30, Troy Music Hall, Troy NY All-Chopin program www.troymusichall.org
Thurs. Oct. 14, Carnegie Hall Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 with Orpheus
Fri. Nov. 5, Sat. Nov. 6, Sun. Nov. 7, Copley Symphony Hall, San Diego, All-Chopin programs
Wed. Nov. 10, Wed. Dec. 8, Alice Tully Hall, NY

new.lincolncenter.org/live/index.php/gp-1011-garrick-ohlsson

Contemporary music, easy on the ears

2010-09-24T04:19:00.003-04:00

Contemporary music finds a welcome home in Mt. Kisco NY, where last Sunday Music from Copland House brought composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz to its capacious barn at the Westchester estate, Merestead for a sneak preview of his first opera, Séance on a Wet Afternoon. With the multiple Oscar winner speaking quietly and self-deprecatingly, series artistic director Michael Boriskin traced the path of Schwartz' career from Godspell and Pippin to his current smash hit Wicked, following which tenor Michael Marcotte joined Schwartz to sing through some of his fine songs, including “Day By Day,” “Corner of the Sky,” and “For Good.”

Based on a novel by Mark McShane and a 1964 British film, Séance is about a warped medium who seeks to further her career by kidnapping a child and then revealing information about her whereabouts in a a trance. In talking about the process of developing the opera, which premiered last year in Santa Barbara and will come to New York City Opera in April 2011, Schwartz noted the differences between writing opera and musicals. He said he had been attracted to this story for a long time but found it too subtle and moody for musical theater, and was delighted to have the chance to try his hand at opera. The libretto was completed first, and then he began the music, of which we heard about twenty minutes, including an aria, “One Little Lie,” sung by the sensational soprano Lauren Flanigan, for whom the work was written. (Hear it for yourself on YouTube.)

The overall impression was of high-intensity drama —“it's really dark, I'm happy to say,” Schwartz grinned—with typically finely crafted lyrics somewhat diffused by music rather too predictable in its harmonies and melodic contours, though always pleasant to listen to. But if Schwartz can get the millions of worldwide Wicked fans to venture into an opera house for the first time and maybe try some Mozart and Verdi after that, then he'll really have given the art form a big boost.

Up the road a piece in MIllerton, NY, Music of Kaija Saariaho, Leon Kirchner and Joan Tower and others made up the excellent inaugural program of Now! Concerts at the Millerton Library Annex last Saturday afternoon. As I listened, it struck me that we now have a century of music behind us that explored radically different sonorities from the hundreds of years preceding. From Stravinsky and Schoenberg to the thorny works of Pierre Boulez, the intricacies of Elliot Carter, the explosions of Ralph Shapey, the soundscapes of Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, our ears have been cultured to the point where the sounds themselves are becoming as familiar as the music of the preceding centuries. And today's young performers seem perfectly at home with repertoire that in earlier days would have been thought unplayable, as well as unlistenable.

So although the music was contemporary, much of it had a very familiar ring to it. Five excellent musicians carried off the program with great style and seeming ease. The Kalmia String Quartet's members are still students at Bard College, where they have worked with the renowned composer Joan Tower, and gave a keenly sensitive and dynamic performance of her Quartet No. 4 “Angels,” and the energetic first movement of the Samuel Barber Quartet No. 1, which contains the lyrical and ubiquitous Adagio.

The Kalmia four, three of whom are brothers, alternated with the superb cellist Sophie Shao, who offered solo works by Saariaho and Benjamin Britten, the former replete with tricky harmonics, and the latter more conventionally lyrical and characteristic of the composer's keen sense of rhythm, all exquisitely played. And the short Kirchner work, "For Cello Solo," the most rigorously academic of the afternoon's music, seemed as comfortable as Brahms in her hands. If the word spreads, Now! Concerts, which hopes to expand to four concerts next season, will need to find a bigger venue for the audience, some of whom drove over an hour for the event.

The Fairy Queen at BAM

2010-04-08T11:41:00.002-04:00

I recently wrote elsewhere about the somewhat off-putting carnal cavorting in a local production of Rent. Similar activity in Purcell's The Fairy Queen, which had a brief run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last month, had an entirely different effect on the audience: sidesplitting laughter, due to the fact that all the dancers were in fluffy bunny costumes. The four-hour evening was filled with many other innocently ridiculous moments and a host of sublime ones as well. The sumptuous production by the Glyndbourne Festival Opera, two French companies and BAM brought fine British film and stage vets together with Jonathan Kent's direction to enact the story, mostly taken from A Midsummer Night's Dream, complemented by Purcell's exuberant, brilliantly performed music from the Paris-based ensemble Les Arts Florissant under its director, the reigning king of early music, William Christie. There was magic in the air from start to finish, and he responded to the tremendous ovation by leading everyone (the full house included) in an encore of the final chorus, as a shower of little paper hearts descended from the heavens. Everyone left the theater chattering excitedly and beaming with joy. Visit bam.org for the full schedule of concerts, plays, films, cabaret, and art exhibits at this artistic cauldron in the heart of Brooklyn. Christie's fine recording of the musical portion of this semi-opera is available on the Harmonia Mundi label.

Happy 200th, Chopin! and other Music Mountain treats

2010-03-14T12:05:00.002-04:00

Happy birthday to that romantic of romantics, Frederic Chopin, who was born 200 years ago this month. Music Mountain will celebrate this event with three substantial works of his, all to be heard there for the first time. The season opens on June 13 with Ciceley Parnas and Peter Serkin performing the Cello Sonata on a program that includes the Debussy Violin Sonata and the Ravel Trio, with violinist Madalyn Parnas.

Both of Chopin's popular piano concertos will follow, transcribed for piano quintet and performed by the St. Petersburg Quartet with Irina Morozova (No. 1, July 25) and the Penderecki Quartet with Jan Lisiecki (No. 2, July 11). The festival will also be graced with a string of other novel local premieres. The 20th century works include a seven-movement crossover piece from 1995 by Wynton Marsalis, the Bassoon Quintet by New England-based composer Russell Platt, and Paul Chihara's arrangement of the classic Strayhorn tune, “Take the A Train,” all played by the Harlem Quartet on July 18 as an Operating Fund Benefit.

Dipping into unexplored older repertoire, director Nicholas Gordon has come up with a quartet transcription of Bach's Chaconne, to be played by the St. Petersburg on Aug. 22, and Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel's Quartet in Eb on Aug. 15 in the hands of the DaPonte String Quartet. Returning perennial favorites include the Ravel Quartet (July 18), Schumann's Piano Quintet (July 31), and, to help celebrate the festival's 81st anniversary, the

As always, there a number of special jazz, dance and ethnic music concerts on the calendar, beginning with Sat. June 19, an evening of swing with Alan Simon and his band (dancing optional). Klezmer music with the Alexander Fiterstein Duo prances in on June 27, while on July 3 it's Falls Village Day, featuring trombonist Peter McEachern, cellist David Darling and others in a mixture of jazz, blues and chamber music. Complete season schedule and tickets at musicmountain.org or 860-824-7126. To whet your appetite for all of this, tune into Sharon radio WHDD 91.9 each Saturday at noon or Sunday at 9 p.m. for rebroadcasts of previous concerts

Avalon Quartet

2010-02-23T16:13:00.003-05:00

In a week where much of the world was glued to their TV sets watching spectacular skaters in Vancouver, often accompanied by Russian music, Saturday night's program of quartets by the Illinois-based Avalon Quartet, in the Close Encounters with Music series at the Mahaiwe, fit right in. Two of the works on the program were by Russians, and the third was one of Beethoven's Rasumovsky set. I was not able to stay for that final piece, but the first half of the concert was a joy. CEWM Artistic director Yehuda Hanani, noted cellist and master teacher with a formidable background, illuminated the music with a pre-concert lecture filled with informative facts flavored by his dry wit.

The Prokofiev Quartet No. 2 is not as profound as his first essay in that genre, but is notable for the variety of folk themes taken from the Kabardino-Balkar region of the USSR where he was staying in 1942, having been evacuated along with other artists following the Nazi invasion of the country. The Mahaiwe is a great space for chamber music, and the Avalon players rewarded its rapt audience with a stunning performance filled with delicate instrumental colors, impeccable ensemble, and spirit. Since their formation at the Norfolk Festival in 1995, they have joined the short list of the finest quartets of their generation. It will be interesting to compare the sound of this reading with their return visit to Music Mountain on June 20.

Hanani then played musical chairs with the second violinist, for a quartet by Anton Arensky written with two cellos instead of the typical two violins. The consequently darker sound was perfect for the brooding Russian Orthodox themes that weave in and out of the outer movements. In between them come a famous set of variations on a Tchaikovsky children's song that gave the musicians a chance to do their equivalent of triple loops, quadruple axels, and of course, Russian splits.

The next concert in the Close Encounters series on Sat. March 20 at 6 p.m., features Yehuda Hanani joined by violinist Cordelia Hagmann and pianist James Tocco in an an all-Bach pre-birthday celebration that includes many transcriptions from the Romantic era. Tickets $35/$10 students at cewm.org or at the Mahaiwe.

Alice Guy Schedule at Whitney

2009-11-03T16:21:00.003-05:00

A busy month...after the fun performance of ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED at the Museum of Arts and Design, with audience participation in the SFX department, and NANOOK OF THE NORTH at MoMA, the museum tour continues with the opening of the Whitney's major retrospective of the work of Alice Guy Blaché.

Here are the programs I will be playing for, they are all of great interest to anyone studying early silent film, narrative film, period dance, and full of humor and whimsy.
I hope many people will drop by.

A5: Live Accompaniment (except for phonoscènes)
Sun, Nov. 8, 2009

Danse des saisons: L’Hiver, danse de la neige [Dance of the Seasons: Winter, Snow Dance], 1900 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

Au cabaret [At the Club], 1899 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

Chez le maréchal-ferrant [At the Blacksmith’s], 1899 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

Avenue de l’Opéra, 1900 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

La Bonne absinthe [The Good Absinthe], 1899 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

L’Aveugle fin de siècle [The Turn-of-the-century Blind Man], 1898 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

Chapellerie et charcuterie mécaniques [Mechanical Hat-and-Sausage-maker], 1900 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm, and Lobster Films, Paris

La Fée aux choux [The Cabbage Fairy], 1896?/1900 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

La Concierge [The Concierge], 1900 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

Chez le photographe [At the Photographer’s], 1900 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

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Madame a des envies [Madame Has Cravings], 1906 (Gaumont). Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris

Mixed Pets, 1911 (Solax). Library of Congress, Washington, DC

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Alice Guy tourne une phonoscène [Alice Guy films a phonoscène], 1905 (Gaumont). Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris [No accompaniment]

Questions indiscrètes [Indiscreet Questions], 1905 (Gaumont; phonoscène). Performed by Félix Mayol. Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris [No accompaniment]

Le Vrai jiu-jitsu [The True Jujitsu], 1905 (Gaumont; phonoscène). Performed by Dranem. Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris [No accompaniment]

C5: Live Accompaniment
Sun, Nov. 22, 2009

Baignade dans le torrent [Swimming in the Stream], 1897 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

Le Pêcheur dans le torrent [The Fisherman in the Stream], 1897 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

Ballet libella, 1897 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

Danse du papillon [Butterfly Dance], 1897 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

Danse serpentine [Serpentine Dance], 1897 (Gaumont). Performances by Mme Bob Walter. Lobster Films, Paris

Les Malabares [The Malabares], 1902 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

Chapellerie et charcuterie mécaniques [Mechanical Hat-and Sausage-maker], 1900 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm, and Lobster Films, Paris

Chirurgie fin de siècle [Turn-of-the-century Surgery], 1900 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

La Petite magicienne [The Little Magician], 1900 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

Intervention malencontreuse [Untimely Intervention], 1902 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

Chiens savants [Performing Dogs], 1902 (Gaumont). Featuring Miss Dundee and her trained dogs. Lobster Films, Paris

Faust et Méphistophélès [Faust and Mephistopheles], 1903 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

Une Histoire roulante [A Rolling Story], 1906 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

Ballon dirigeable--Lebaudy N3 [The Dirigible—Lebaudy No. 3], 1906 (Gaumont). Lobster Films, Paris

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The Ocean Waif, 1916 (International Film Service Inc.; Golden Eagle Features/International Film Service Inc.) Library of Congress, Washington, DC

D5: Live Accompaniment (except for phonoscènes)
Sun, Nov. 29, 2009

Alice Guy tourne une phonoscène [Alice Guy films a phonoscène], 1905 (Gaumont). Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris [No accompaniment]

Lilas-Blanc [White Lilacs], 1905 (Gaumont; phonoscène). Performed by Félix Mayol. Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris [No accompaniment]

Five O’Clock Tea, 1905 (Gaumont; phonoscène). Performances by Dranem. Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris [No accompaniment]

Les Maçons [The Builders], 1905 (Gaumont). Performed by the O’Mers. La Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, Brussels

La Course à la saucisse [The Race after the Sausage], 1906 (Gaumont). La Cinémathèque royale de Belgique, Brussels

Le Matelas alcoolique or Le Matelas épileptique [The Alcoholic Mattress or The Epileptic Mattress], 1906 (Gaumont). Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Women Film Pioneers Project Collection

La Glu [The Glue], 1906 (Gaumont). Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Une Course d’obstacles [An Obstacle-course Race], 1906 (Gaumont). Archives du Film du CNC, Bois d'Arcy, France

BREAK

Two Little Rangers, 1912 (Solax). Filmmuseum, Amsterdam

Outwitted by Horse and Lariat, 1911 (Solax). Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Berlin [Cowboystreiche]

Algie the Miner, 1912 (Solax). Directed by Edward Warren and Harry Shenck. Library of Congress, Washington, DC

Greater Love Hath No Man, 1911 (Solax). Library of Congress, Washington, DC

E5: Live Accompaniment
Sun, Dec. 6, 2009

Danse serpentine [Serpentine Dance], 1902 (Gaumont). Performed by Lina Esbrard. Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris

Danse fleur-de-lotus [Lotus-Flower Dance], 1897 (Gaumont). Gaumont Pathé Archives, Paris

Falling Leaves, 1912 (Solax). Library of Congress, Washington, DC

BREAK

Au cabaret [At the Club], 1899 (Gaumont). Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm

The Girl in the Armchair, 1912 (Solax). Academy Film Archive--Center for Motion Picture Study, Los Angeles

A Fool and His Money, 1912 (Solax). Library of Congress, Washington, DC; AFI/David and Margo Navone Collection

Roads Lead Home, 1913 (Solax). Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Women Film Pioneers Project Collection

Jerusalem and Italy

2009-10-18T16:51:00.003-04:00

The Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra gave a concert in its home that I attended two weeks ago. As the state radio orchestra, its funding ostensibly comes from the Israel Broadcasting Authority, a government organization which believes, however, that the city of Jerusalem ought to subsidize them just as Tel Aviv does for the Israel Philharmonic. Jerusalem's bureaucrats, meanwhile, say that it's the national government that ought to be paying the bills, and so it goes. A crisis has ensued, particularly because private and corporate sponsorship, which were until recently at a respectable level, collapsed in the wake of the Bernard Madoff debacle. In order to keep afloat, the players have taken a 30% pay cut. It remains to be seen how long this situation can continue.

Clearly the musicians love their work. Some of them have been with the orchestra for over thirty years, while others are recent emigrés from Russia and Serbia. There were even a couple of New Yorkers among them for this special Jewish New Year program. Guest conductor Peter Breiner, a native of Slovakia turned Manhattanite, is much loved by the orchestra. He wrote two pieces for this event, a vigorous multi-movement work for clarinet, harp and orchestra, and a whimsical potpourri of Gershwin tunes beginning with “A Foggy Day” and winding up with “The Man I Love” as a hora. Both works were commissioned and performed by Giora Feidman, arguably the finest klezmer clarinetist in the world, and who filled the hall with the sound of four different instruments.

Entering from the audience, he played a Chassidic melody as he strolled up to the stage. Other clarinetists gnash their teeth hearing him, Breiner says, unable to duplicate his pure, soft tone. Feidman, who has a house in West Stockbridge, ought to be heard in our area. At 73, he plays over 200 concerts all over the world every year, and is a lively personality who in rehearsal wandered around the stage kibbitzing with the players he's has known for years (he was first clarinetist with the Israel Philharmonic for many years). In performance he had the audience clapping along with the folk melodies that made up much of the rest of the evening's repertoire, which included the premiere of my "Three Psalms for Orchestra," which I wrote at Peter's request. Excerpts of the concert on YouTube (sorry, link doesn't work, try it manually by searching for me on the site.)

Klezmer music and subsidies were also in the air in Pordenone, Italy, where I spent last week at the annual silent film festival, the world's largest. A score for string quartet and clarinet by Israeli composer Betty Olivero (originally written for Feidman, coincidentally), was remarkable for its whirling medieval textures and plaintive Hebraic chants to accompany “The Golem,” a German Expressionist classic. Packing the house on opening night at the 1000-seat Teatro Verdi was the 1925 Erich von Stroheim film "The Merry Widow", with a new score by the Dutch composer/pianist Maud Nelissen, who obtained special permission from the Franz Lehár estate to weave the familiar themes of the operetta into her orchestral adaptation, luxuriously performed by the Orchester Mitteleuropa, with Ms. Nelissen at the piano (a superb Fazioli, by the way, manufactured in the neighboring town of Sacile—attendees at Hotchkiss concerts have enjoyed the crystalline sound these instruments produce). Up until a week before, it was unclear whether there would be enough funds to have more than a few strings in the band, but at the last minute a local bank came up with additional funds to expand the ensemble, and the sound was gorgeous, Lehár's melodies often morphing into a postmodern haze that perfectly complemented the visuals.

Romanian days

2009-10-18T16:42:00.003-04:00

Oct. 10-Hi from Cluj, Romania. Thanks to Herr Bach, who wrote a little fugue 300 years ago that I heard being played by Ionut Vacar, a 21.5-year old music student here in June, I am now staying in his (Ionut's, not Johann's) family's apartment for a few days. HIs violin teacher dad took me to the Music Academy "Gheorge Dima" here this morning, where I met Adrian Pop, the director (himself a gifted composer a month older than I, who complains, as music administrators in the US do, of having no time to compose in the face of voluminous paper work). He generously offered to sandwich me between the renowned Transilvanian Quartet's Brahms program tonight and a piano recital by a Romanian virtuoso far more respectable than I on Wednesday. So on the eve of my 58th birthday I will be at the Steinway to present a silent film program to the public, and maybe throw in some Beatles songs in the styles of various composers, which Pop found an entertaining idea.

I'm in the kitchen now, with delicious smells coming from the stove where Lydia is fussing, and Johnny (Ionut) is working on a poster and spreading the news on Facebook; we'll see who shows up on short notice. Oddly enough, last week some local jazz guys did the Murnau film TABU that Jo and I had done in Staten Island two years ago, and it seems likely that we will be invited to perform here in May as part of the Transilvanian Film Festival, one of the biggest in this part of Europe, in conjunction with the Pordenone festival from which I have just [escaped, collapsed, insert your verb of choice]. More news as it happens. The Vacar family are fantastic, I feel so fortunate to have met them. The two kids stayed with us in July and we know this will be a longterm friendship. Thanks, Sebastian! You did it again!

The new season

2009-09-23T09:29:00.004-04:00

The leaves are turning again and it's time to turn the clock ahead 6 or 7 hours and go to Europe for the Pordenone festival. This year I'll be playing for FOUR JUST MEN, a British detective film, De Mille's THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, a program of Sherlock Holmes films, DER FÜRST VON PAPPENHEIM, a comedy about fashion; Dreyer's MASTER OF THE HOUSE; a kids' show of SHERLOCK, JR.; a new little short called SMOKE RINGS I have just scored for Portland filmmaker Rex Carter, on a bill with ÉTUDES SUR PARIS; and a trio of erotic films from Belgrade. Plus accompanying Jean Darling in a little song about motion picture palaces.

But first I will travel to Jerusalem next week to hear the premiere of my new piece, THREE PSALMS FOR ORCHESTRA at the special Rosh Hashanah concert of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, conducted by my longtime friend Peter Breiner, who commissioned the piece. More about that from Israel.

Here is a paper written by one of the participants in the Pordenone Collegium last year, which has a lot of insight into the problems we accompanists face in the course of our work. Hope you enjoy!

____________________________________

Polly Ellen Goodwin
How to Watch a Silent Film: The View from the Pit

One image of Mary Pickford saturated the Giornate of 2008. Seated with her knees drawn in, head tilted upwards, her lovely face and curls softly lit, she gazes intently at something in the distance; becoming for once watcher as well as watched. Emblazoned on posters, bollards, leaflets, not to mention the biblically important festival program, this figure of Mary was representative of the position that we all, after our own fashion, repeatedly settled into throughout our stay in Pordenone. Sitting in the theatre, our eyes focused on the screen, lit (perhaps not quite so aesthetically) by the projection of the film, our role too was that of Watcher.

I am the first to agree with the oft-repeated claim that to watch a silent film is anything but passive. It demands the engagement of logic and imagination, and for those with a particular ‘bent’ within the field of silent film, that of intellect and analysis (and the ability to scribble notes in the near-darkness). However, to argue that the role of the audience is unduly strenuous would be at odds with that experience of being intensely focused in the (almost) trance-like state induced by the particular combination of image and music which is unique to the exhibition of silent film. Coming out, from an hour or more of sitting in the warm comfort of the Verdi, the assertion that we are active viewers seems, at times, difficult to justify. This enjoyable mental exercise certainly pales in comparison when compared with the workload of the accompanists – a group whose task is to literally watch ‘actively’ during the festival. Before championing our own workload, take a moment to imagine, what it must be like to have to watch a film whilst simultaneously responding to it via the medium of music? Perhaps you have not even seen the film before, yet there is an audience out there expecting you to get right inside that film – interpreting it in sound for their pleasure and understanding. Clearly, to watch a silent film from the pit as musician encompasses a very different set of viewing skills, concerns, strategies and abilities. The process to outsiders seems unfathomable, and yet it is one that is more than worth exploring, because of the very fact that it hinges upon the acquisition and demonstration of “an extraordinary insight into film interpretation” (as correctly pointed out in the festival literature) – something which would enrich the experience for all with a love for silent film.

This year’s range of musical accompaniment was as diverse as ever. Jeffrey Silverman’s score, performed by the Orchestra Sinfonica del Friuli Venezia Giulia, brought Sparrows to life on the opening night, whilst the closing night’s showing of Les Nouveaux Messieurs was paired with L’Octuour de France’s rendition of a composition by Antonio Coppola. Michael Nyman performed his interpretation of documentaries by Vigo and Vertov, and the ‘Striking a New Note’ project paired a group of young musicians with Keaton’s gloriously surreal One Week and a miscellany of cartoons. Over in the Ridotto those of us not at its premier at Bologna got another chance to hear a recorded version of Neil Brand’s much acclaimed new score to Blackmail.

However, the backbone of the festival’s music was provided by the pool of world renowned silent film accompanists who thankfully return each year to take up residence. Unlike those pre-composed scores just mentioned, the majority of their work allows much less opportunity for preparation – sometimes none. It is their work that I am particularly keen to consider.

But how and where to start? Although a friendly, recognisable and approachable presence around the town, the resident musicians are operating in an event which, even in its title of ‘Giornate del Cinema Muto’, seems to deny their very existence. The musician-at-work is, in the Verdi at least, buried away below the stage, the theatre in darkness, making the job of uncovering the secrets of their art and craft seem daunting to say the least.

Fortunately, our musicians contributed more than their musical accompaniment to the festival. To their great credit they also provided, in the form of daily masterclasses, a means of getting closer to the appreciation and understanding of the nature of (improvisational) film accompaniment. Aimed, in the first instance, at disseminating their knowledge and guidance to the 2 chosen ‘aspirants’, they also most unselfishly threw the doors open to any and every one of the festival rank-and-file who fortuitously trod that particular trail of blue and pink paving stones - a godsend to those of us new to Pordenone and not blessed with a sense of direction – that led to the Auditorium della Regione.

Here, between 11 and 1 each day, truly was ‘the best show in town’, as those of us present were shown how to really watch a silent film. Through demonstration and discussion, students and teachers explored together the methods, techniques, intentions and tasks that this profession entails. It soon became apparent that, alongside the skills of the ‘pure’ musician was needed the responses and inventiveness of jazz improviser combined with the actor’s and director’s sense of drama. Given the (puzzlingly) low attendance rate at these classes, it seemed appropriate to try and share some of the invaluable and fascinating experiences and thought processes of those who ‘watch’ a silent film in a way few of us have the skill, artistry or sheer nerve to do.

“Packing ‘em in.”

For many of their predecessors of the early 1900s the first (and sometimes only) task of the pit musician was taking care of “packing.” They would be expected to keep the audience entertained before the film started, playing their instruments preferably at a loud enough volume to entice further potential customers from the street outside. [Altman, 197]

Whilst today’s musicians are spared this duty, the ‘collecting together’ of the audience remains the accompanist’s initial concern. It is hard for visuals to command instant and unified attention as effectively as sound can, although the darkening of the auditorium lights conveys to some extent the need for the audience to physically and audibly settle down. Although we were not quite as badly behaved as the rowdy, big-hat-wearing audience Charles ‘Chic’ Sales’ character had to contend with in the 1920-1 film, His Nibs, these first notes from the pit do act as a musical ‘ssshhhh’, reminding us that we are there to watch a film, politely explaining that, if we are sitting comfortably, then the film can begin.

The precise question of ‘when to start?’ elicited various responses. Some took their cue from the appearance of the new animated Giornate logo that immediately preceded each screening, others choosing to wait until the credits of the advertised film started rolling. Either way, the function of these first few bars was likened in the Masterclasses to that of the overture in opera; Donald Sosin spoke of trying to achieve a “coherence of brain waves, a group of people all thinking at the same time,” indicating the ongoing aim of the accompanist to draw us together as an audience whose focus is united on the performance.

“You should not do everything – you make a decision” [Günther Buchwald]

So now that the audience is comfortable and under control, what next for the musician who, for the duration of the film, cannot sit back and relax?

The preoccupation of the masterclasses was with the accompaniment of the narrative film, in which the likelihood is that the first images seen will be “a title....a cast list...that is when ‘the plot’ begins.” But he scene with which the film proper begins, may invite a very different musical response from that of the overture. Using sections from the 1928 Vidor film, The Patsy, as grounds for experimentation, one aspirant chose spirited 20s ragtime to accompany the jazzy-looking credits, a style that became too big for the intimate, 4-headed domestic scene to which the title cards gave way. The need here is to ‘set up the world’ – to join in with the ‘once upon a time’ nature of a film’s beginning, which might demand a quick change of musical direction.

These masterclasses, remember, are predominantly about enlarging the aspirants’ skills for improvisational accompaniment, and so it is worth reiterating that we are exploring the experience of the musician who is seeing the film he is accompanying for the first time, as it unfolds in performance.

Overture over, now begins a period of continuous, sustained decision-making that must last for as long as the film is running. The hardest decisions required of most of us at the festival were of the variety of agonising over whether to watch the curiously hilarious His Nibs in the Verdi, or to steel yourself to watch the monumental La Roue showing at the same time in the Ridotto next door. For the musician in the pit, making constant, rapid and, most importantly, well-informed decisions is the lynchpin of the job. It is for this reason that these masterclasses are such an invaluable resource for learning how to ‘read’ silent film. Right from the first scene, the musicians have to look intently at the mise-en-scène, the actors, the interaction between characters, the editing; indeed any and every visual clue to allow them to understand and make valid judgements about the film and what it is trying to say. Not only are they doing this for themselves, they then must ‘translate’ these decisions musically, helping the audience understand and ‘feel’ the film as intelligently as they are doing. Through the masterclasses, experiments demonstrated how decisions relating to pitch, timbre, tempo, rhythm, affect our impression of a scene. Here are musicians with a heightened awareness of possible music-image relationships: picking up, for instance, on the rhythmic nature of characters eating soup round a table as being inspiration for a way for music to reinforce and draw out the movements of the actors. Always alert to signals, they also have to quickly assess what is of primary focus within shot, scene and film. You cannot play everything, nor should you, was the guidance given.
This flags up a major choice the musicians must make: to respond to a moment, so as to flag it up to the audience, or to contribute continuity by creating and maintaining a more overarching relationship between music and image. For our musicians, both approaches have merit. Creating a flow with the music is a way of giving more unity to a disjointed film, something which Laura Rossi, commissioned to provide a score to The Battle of the Somme, noted and made use of. The long-established convention of utilising library pieces and cue sheets is one that shares this ethos: making use of collections of passages of music, usually 16 or 32 bars in length, which clearly would not always be in strictest harmony with each instant of the film. Demonstrating the opposite tactic, in The Battle of the Sexes, Phylis Haver’s trembling hands – the clue with which she showed to the audience her character’s inward emotional state - was underlined and conveyed aurally by Stephen Horne’s quivering piano accompaniment.
The characters, of course, are frequently the core of the action, and so unsurprisingly take up much of the musician’s consideration. As each character is introduced and woven into the story, decisions must be made about their relationships with each other and their journeys throughout the film. Making use of leitmotifs is one possibility; musically ‘name-tagging’ each so as to aid the audience in identification and comprehension. This is not always practical however, and certainly not on a consistent basis. Attempting to give each character his or her own ‘theme’ when accompanying a segment of Duvivier’s 1925 film, Poil de Carotte, in one masterclass proved impossible for one of the students when it proved that the film simply did not allow the time for each motif to be heard.

To Integrate or to separate the intertitles is yet another decision to be made. An option is to break away from the music in order to ‘play the speech’, giving a flavour of the rhythm, tempo and tone of the written words. For comedies in particular, the genre which Andrew Simpson considered the most challenging for the accompanist, this can potentially add much to the film, if timed effectively. However, even the necessary possession of comic timing is beaten when the film’s titles are translated piecemeal – as was often the case with the electronic subtitling solution that is the Giornate’s answer to Silent Film’s erroneous claims of universality.

Add to all of the above choices about which musical style, genre, and period to select to couch your music, and you can appreciate why any tendency to procrastination would be a serious disadvantage for any would-be accompanist.

“What if, all of a sudden, you don’t know what’s going on?” [Andrew Simpson]

The skill of improvisational accompaniment not only involves identifying and capitalising on expressive opportunities. It is also about spotting and coping with the many potential pitfalls with which this job is littered.

The work environment, at the Verdi at least, is problematical in itself: situated away from the big screen, they have to work from just a small monitor, much of which may be taken up by the dual English-Italian intertitle translations already mentioned. Again, this is nothing new in this profession: one organist playing in Oxford in the 1920s had to make the best of reading intertitles backwards; the location of his instrument in relationship to the screen requiring the services of a strategically placed mirror.
Vision (and therefore understanding) can also be hampered by the nature of much of the material. We are treated at the festival to some triumphs of restoration: breathtakingly fresh and immaculate prints that, in true Hollywood style, barely betray their not inconsiderable age. However, today’s silent film fan demonstrates a level of tolerance probably far above and beyond anything that a viewer of 80-odd years ago would have possessed. On the theory that anything is better than nothing, sometimes the only print available is one that is battered and worn. The grotesque faces of the nitrate-damaged victims at the start of His Nibs demonstrate how bad things can get, and yet the audience still expect music. In fact, they need music. Music is needed more than ever when a film is in some way ‘difficult’, and it is a big part of the music’s (and musicians’) job to hold our hands through both good and bad parts of the film. Tutto per mio Fratello, the 1911 film that it was Touve Ratovondrahety’s challenge to accompany, contained several instances where the print was frankly unfathomable, and yet his continued and confident music kept us with the film even where the images failed. Clearly he had taken on board Neil Brand’s observation that ““Even if you don’t know where the film is going [if you play like you do] the audience relaxes.”

Maintaining this aura of control, however, is subject to avoiding the minefield that a silent film can prove for the musician accompanying it. It has already been said that not all ‘moments’ in the film can or should have a musical counterpart. However, missing out certain moments could lead to what one theorizer of the 1910s called “The worst mistake that a musician can make....to dispel the illusion.” [Altman, 244] The most obvious thing to miss is the musical accompaniment of music, for music (and sound) is frequently alluded to within the ‘silent’ film. And not just miss, but also miscalculate. Throughout the week we heard horror stories about experiences of playing one style of music alongside, for instance, the image of a spinning gramophone record (only to discover in close-up that the music on that record was about as far away musically as it was possible to get). And we saw first-hand how assumptions can be wrong. The shot of a finger pushing the doorbell in another scene from The Patsy studied in the masterclass saw one aspirant, quite logically, create a musical tinkling to match. However, it subsequently turned out that the doorbell was broken, and thus, logically, soundless. On a first viewing it would be impossible to anticipate this, but if your first viewing is ‘the performance’ then you just have to plough on and hope that you can win back the audience’s confidence as the film goes on.

And what if there just simply doesn’t seem to be ‘a moment’ at all? In the fluctuating relationship between sound and music in silent film, sometimes the image steps back, and seems to invite the music to do the talking; as when a performer deeply internalises his or her emotions, leaving it to the audience and music to fill in the repressed histrionics. However, for the musician, there may be times when the vacuum on the screen is caused not by the poor quality of a print, but is a result of the film being, at that point, just plain empty – the historical tableau being Neil Brand’s particular pet hate, allowing as it does for so little empathy.
The ability to respond imaginatively is also demanded when a film is anything but boring, and the accompanist is likely to be handed some frankly mystifying moments to portray in sound (anyone fancy recreating submarine depth charges on a piano?).
The aspirants were, incidentally, equipped with a fail-safe way to deal with that dilemma of what to do if “all of a sudden, you don’t know what’s going on.” The simplicity of the repeated note (non-committal, yet full of possibilities) was given as a most efficacious emergency aid, and one which also neutered the impact of playing ‘the wrong note (for how can a note seem ‘wrong’ when it is confidently replayed?)
Of course, all the musicians shared the view that it was preferable to have at least some idea of the film they would be accompanying. Günther Buchwald explained to me that “it is ideal for the musician to be able to see the film before playing it, so that a coherent and thoughtful interpretation can be developed. When the accompanist sees a film for the first time during a performance ... the musician is always behind the film, trying to keep up, rather than guiding the viewer.” If it cannot be seen beforehand, there are other means of being prepared. As their early 20th century counterparts were also urged to do, the masterclass students were encouraged to refer to the film’s synopsis. Clearly, the wonderfully exhaustive festival catalogue is as valuable to the musicians as it is to the rest of us. Discovering from this that Tutto per mio fratello involved “the switch of identities of a pair of twins” not only forewarned Touve to be alert to exactly which brother was on screen at any time, but also provided a possible source for musical inspiration – as did the information that the film (and the play upon which is was based) was bound up in the Commedia dell’ arte tradition.

“What they want is good music” [Altman 241]

Because, of course, alongside all of this they have to provide us with music. Whilst the practice of playing one song after another for the duration of the film (one in common use in earlier film presentation, and on many a cheap and cheerful DVD version) has long fallen out of favour in exchange for “subordinating musical logic to film logic” [Altman243] all the musicians were aware of the importance of constantly asking themselves “is it musical what we can do?” (Günter Buchwald). In his session, Donald Sosin urged students to try and “make a piece that really sounds like a piece [giving it] more musical structure.” Gabriel Thibaudeau saw the injection of musicality as yet another way to respond to the requirements of the public, stressing the need to “give those melodic threads to help anchor the audience,” starting right from the overture.
Again, in the context of silent film accompaniment, this demands more than just musical sensibilities. Accompanists must develop a sort of “internal alarm clock” (Donald Sosin), set to go off if the same tempo or rhythm is employed for too long. By allowing such steady ‘metronoming’ of a film you are in serious danger of lulling your audience to sleep. In the marathon that is the week-long festival, tiredness levels amongst the audience are at their peak, and in the cosy, dark, comfortable environment of the cinema, we are all susceptible to nodding off unless sufficiently stimulated. Responding to changes in the film’s tempo and the rhythm of the editing, to dynamics in the action, to changes in the scene, putting in a bar of 5/4 amidst the 4/4, or briefly breaking away from rhythm altogether - all helps to keep your audience with both you and the film. Pity the music critic whose first experience of a nickelodeon in Cincinatti in 1910 was to see an exhibition of the Kalem film, The Stolen Turquoise. The music apparently consisted of a 4-bar passage (which he transcribed for posterity) which was repeated continuously, though “varied occasionally” with another 4-bar passage. [Altman, 207]. The twenty minutes that the film lasted must have felt more like 2 hours, and it is only to be hoped that the unfortunate critic was not deterred altogether from the cinema thereafter.

Incidentally, stamina, both physical and mental, is another requisite of the accompanist, with this year’s prize surely going to Günther Buchwald, who, for 165 minutes straight, provided musical interpretation for the epic 1929 Norwegian film, Laila. At least this festival operates a rotating system to allow each accompanist to rest – a previous study on silent film accompaniment in Oxford unearthed the pianist (no doubt one of many) whose shift was from 6pm until 10, with no breaks between films and no holidays.

As necessary as making good music is, however, all our musicians were agreed that “People are there first and foremost to see the film.” (Gabriel Thibaudeau). They were insistent that at no point should the music (or performer) be bigger or more important than the film. No matter how inspired a piece of improvisation you might come out with, you have to be ‘disposable’: the film will plough on regardless, and will not wait whilst the musician goes off on a tangential exposition and resolution of a musical idea, no matter how great it might be. Silent film accompaniment was not regarded as an arena to showcase unquestionable musical abilities, but rather as an opportunity to use those abilities to ‘serve’ the images on the screen. The reassuring, and recurring, mantra from all the musicians throughout all the masterclasses was to ‘respect the film,’ and whilst they have a multitude of decisions to make about it, they have no intentions of imposing a reading of that film that is not there. The ego has to take a back-seat, as, to some extent, does personal taste. A previous collegian brought up the conundrum of what to do if you don’t agree with the film you are accompanying; to which Günther Buchwald replied “If I don’t agree with the story, then either I decide not to accompany that film or...I will do my very best to come round.” Despite (or perhaps because of) this supportive relationship, I know I am not alone in admitting that on a number of occasions a great accompaniment has kept me in a film that I would otherwise have walked out of, either in disgust or overwhelming indifference. As Kevin Brownlow pointed out in the invaluable The Parade’s Gone By, “during the Golden Era, the reputation of a theatre often depended on its orchestra. People sometimes claimed that they went to the movies “just for the music.””

“Keep ‘em Happy” (Donald Sosin)

‘The End!’ when it comes is the cue for the audience to play their most demonstratively active part in the performance. The applause ambiguously given to both musician and film is clearly more than deserved by the former, and marks the end of what has been an amazing (& exhausting) set of creative and logical processes. They have shown us one way of watching that film, figuratively holding our hands throughout, leading us through, their confidence (bluffed or otherwise) allowing us to relax and engage with a movie that, thanks to them, seems made afresh, even though it may have been 80 or more years since its premiere.

Whilst one accompanist of the 1920s claimed that in accompanying Laurel and Hardy films he sometimes “laughed so much [he] had a job to play!,” it is hard to evaluate just how much a Giornate musician would have felt he had a chance to ‘enjoy’ (as a viewer) the film just accompanied. It is the enjoyment of the audience that the musicians are concerned with. The exhortation to the masterclass participants above all to “keep ‘em happy” (Donald Sosin) serves also as a timely reminder to us all that these films, about which some become so serious about analysing, dissecting and evaluating, were, after all, designed to keep us as an audience entertained.
The approach that our Pordenone musicians adopt is not necessarily either historically authentic, or representative of how all silent film accompanists operate today (more is the pity). The historical development of the job is the subject of a number of studies; such as Rick Altman’s Silent Film Sound which reveals the varied, evolving and diverse (and sometimes, frankly worrying) practices and aims of bygone cinema accompanists and is useful in giving context and comparison with the way that the Giornate accompanists operate. Much rarer is the opportunity to be able to see laid bare the methodology and impact of silent film accompaniment. A fascinating process in itself, the level of understanding of and engagement with silent film that our musicians demonstrate and share in these masterclasses means that they are ably and entertainingly teaching us nothing less than ‘how to watch a silent film,’ and it is to be hoped that these masterclasses continue as long as the festival itself.

Resources:
- The Masterclasses, and the Musicians and Aspirants involved in them – all of whom generously gave me their time in subsequent interviews and discussions.
- Victoria Sturtevant, ‘”As if it is a masterpiece”: Conversations with the Giornate Accompanists”, The Collegium Papers III (2001)
- Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (2004)
- Oral History Collection at the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies.

Castleton Festival: Got It Right the First Time

2009-07-30T22:56:00.004-04:00

Wow, long time....I will do a summary of Bologna and San Francisco soon!

Meanwhile, this appeared in the Rappahannock News today.

Castleton Festival: Got It Right the First Time
by Donald Sosin

July 30

Maybe it was the llamas in the lobby of the tent at intermission. Maybe it was singer Matthew Curran, who never missed a beat at the late night cabaret despite the storm that created a thundering wall of rain between him and the laughing, cheering audience. Or the finely-tuned productions of rarely heard operas in a setting as intimate as one could possibly wish for. Or perhaps it was simply the jubilant energy of young musicians who had come from three continents to meld their individual sounds into one vibrant, breathing unit under the baton of one of the world's true geniuses.

Whatever it was, there was something extraordinary going on at the new Castleton Festival that created a wave of enormous delight for those who were lucky enough to be there during its opening summer season earlier this month.

The Châteauville Foundation that Lorin and Dietlinde Maazel founded in 1997 has been presenting events during the year for some time, and has presented operas before, but this year was the beginning of this next phase. Critics from New York and Washington wrote glowingly about the festival, joining the throngs of music-lovers and visiting professionals that came from all over the world to be part of the celebration of chamber operas by Benjamin Britten, master classes in conducting, and mentoring young musical talent.

My regular beat as a music journalist is the northwest corner of Connecticut and its surroundings, where summer festivals are in such profusion that one has to choose from dozens of events within an hour's drive. Each July and August the hills are alive with sounds emanating from Tanglewood and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, string quartets at Music Mountain, the Bard Music Festival's retrospectives of Shostakovich and Wagner, and a bit farther afield, in Cooperstown, Glimmerglass Opera.

So why would I leave all that and spend six days in the back country of Virginia, with no cell phone access and no shopping malls for miles? Full disclosure: there are no malls close to my home either, and our cell service is dicey. Fuller disclosure: my good friend and colleague Paul Reisler had invited me down to Castleton to help with some piano accompaniments for his songwriting students. I had also become friends with Dietlinde Maazel earlier in the year after the moving memorial service for Paul's wife, Julie Portman. Ms. Maazel was coaching these young singers in German diction and acting, including improvising opera scenes, so I spent part of my daytime hours immersed in the sublime music of Schubert, Brahms and Mozart, as well as joining the singers in creating instant operas, from the thoughtful to the ridiculous.

Paul's class produced some really memorable songs, and all the singers in the class improved markedly under the guidance of their coaches, and the beloved soprano Nancy Gustafson, with whom they study during the year at Northwestern University.

But the rest of the time I was a grateful spectator, beginning with the film night that showcased a short new film, “Elah and The Moon,” starring Ms. Maazel, with cameos by local kids, and a longer documentary, “The Legacy,” that follows the lives of nine young musicians as they tour South America as part of The Youth Orchestra of the Americas.

The following night I heard a superb flute recital at The Theatre in Washington, with Robert Langevin, principal flutist of the New York Philharmonic, and pianist Nicholas Ong, that climaxed with Fauré's elegant and noble Sonata in A, originally for violin.

The next morning an orchestral concert showcased the conducting talents of the 10 apprentices, who had been working with the Maestro, sponsored by Rolex. It was fascinating to see that despite their individual styles, there was a uniform concern for precision, economy of motion, and concise, direct communication with the orchestra, all hallmarks of Maazel's work. The conductors and other participants I had a chance to speak with during the week were quite forthcoming in their praise of the way the festival had been organized, and filled with gratitude for the rare chance to work so closely with Maazel.

With the evening came the wry and boisterous comedy, “The Beggar's Opera,” by Britten, and I began to realize what a unique opportunity the festival offered. Glimmerglass presents large-scale operas with full orchestra and seats 900 people. Tanglewood is an enormous operation with thousands of people in attendance.

Castleton's tent (complete with air-conditioning and luxurious water closets) accommodates about 250; the smaller scale makes for more direct involvement. The outstanding cast, directed by resident artist William Kerley, swept around the bare plywood set with gusto and glee, with a stellar performance by Dominic Armstrong as the rogue Macheath. Britten's musical settings of the 18th century ballads by J. C. Pepusch and John Gay are brilliant, and were played with graceful nuance by members of the Qatar Philharmonic under the expert hands of Maazel, who at one point traded quips with Armstrong to the delight of the spectators, many of whom were smack in the middle of the action, one even invited on stage to be serenaded.

I was even more captivated by the performance in the cozy 130-seat opera house of Britten's “Albert Herring,” a richly funny and stunningly written comedy of manners and attitudes, with wonderful cast and ensemble, including mezzo-soprano Jennifer Check as an uptight dowager with a mission to reward virtue, soprano Ashleigh Semkiw as a youthful teacher, and Brian Z. Porter in the title role of a simple grocery clerk who makes the most of his initially unwilling role of May King by freeing himself from his mother's iron grip on his life. Timothy Myers led the impressive orchestra from the Royal College of Music.

There were other events: ad hoc chamber music programs, after hours cabaret nights with a number of singers showing the lighter side of their voices in Broadway and jazz standards, and the final orchestral concert, which I heard only at the dress rehearsal. It featured the Grieg Piano Concerto with 15-year old Seongjin Cho, who must have studied musical magic at Hogwarts, joined by associate conductor Andreas Weiser, and Tchaikovsky's “Rococo Variations eloquently played by Han-na Chang, herself one of the conducting students.

Maazel led the assembled musicians—the London and Qatar groups joined by some American conservatory students and a large contingent of fine string players from Charlottesville High School—in music of Bartók and Verdi to bring the festival to a stirring conclusion.

What impressed me most about all of this was the smooth way that everything flowed—a great accomplishment for a first-time endeavor—and how I spent much of my time grinning. It certainly takes a village to raise the musical rafters, and for this all credit must go to the Maazels and the hard-working team that they assembled, from the local volunteers to the first-chair players of the New York Philharmonic who clearly enjoyed some time to unwind in these serene hills with the man who had led them in stirring performances here and abroad for the past 10 years.

But both the Maazels seemed never to stop. And Ms. Maazel was the last one out of the cabaret on two of the nights, staying into the wee hours of the final evening to sit with a couple of the staff to reflect on the goings on of the preceding weeks and how to improve.

The music may have a vigorous downbeat, but in my short time there, I sensed the Castleton Festival spirit is all upbeat. There is an easygoing spirit of cooperation, an absence of attitude, and it's small enough so that people can make friends easily, take the time to relax, play tennis, swim and dance together (classically trained they may be, but they responded to the closing night party's iPod playlist, a jubilant mix of rock and hip-hop, with abandon).

Next year's festivities begin on July 2 with two new opera productions. I can't wait.

Sonoma Film Festival, Turner Classic Movies, and more

2009-05-09T14:13:00.009-04:00

It's May, and I'm catching up on a whirlwind month of work. I went out to Sonoma California in early April for their annual film festival and played for ROBIN HOOD (1922) and THE PEACH GIRL (1931) with my new Roland RD-700GX. What a great festival! They honored Bruce Willis (didn't get to meet him) and showed a lot of new films by mostly young filmmakers. I particularly enjoyed 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, THE ANSWER MAN, PUNCHING THE CLOWN, BIG DICK, and THREE-FIFTY, and had fun talking with some of the filmmakers. For the Fairbanks film I programmed a variety of medieval sounds: trumpets, drums, recorders, lutes, as well as some more Hollywood-y strings for romance, and improvised on some themes I had prepared beforehand.

The DVD looked fine on a rear projection system, and the capacity audience of 200 gave the performance a standing ovation. The event was voted the #2 audience favorite, which was fantastic, particularly considering it was the first time a silent film had been shown there in the 12 years of the festival.

I also played for the lovely PEACH GIRL, which I had scored previously for Richie Meyer, and which has been shown on TCM. The festival staff is terrific and everyone hoped to do another silent program or two next year. I'm ready!

Having put the finishing touches on THE BIG STAKES, a 1921 Western, I sent it off to Dennis Doros at Milestone Films, and it was shown on TCM on May 5. Along with sounds from the Roland, I had the great pleasure of some help from Howard Levy, harmonica player extraordinaire, Susan Heerema, violin virtuoso, Joe Bouchard, mandolin and banjo whiz, and John Meyer, acoustic guitar genius. Howard and Susan sent in their tracks from Chicago and New Jersey, respectively, and I merged them with the work I and the others did in my home studio. You can hear some of the finished product on YouTube.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4h74gkOMPs

(I tried linking this but it's not working, so copy the whole link and paste...)

Late in April I met with Chris Farina, who directed a new documentary about John Hunter, a teacher of gifted children in Virginia. For 30 years John has been giving workshops to kids using the World Peace board game he developed, and the doc follows the progress of one 4th grade class from day 1 to game's end. Chris has chosen some pre-existing music for a few spots in the film, and I will be adding some additional tracks. The hour-long film is slated for showing on PBS in the fall.

I'm now in Fairfield, Iowa teaching a one-month music appreciation course at Maharishi University of Management. I have 16 students, diverse in age and ability, but all sharing a common love of many different kinds of musical expression, particularly singing, and our daily practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique.

The morning sessions consist of flute lessons taught by an Indian master, and piano lessons, with my guidance both in person and online through my course in Absolute Beginner Keyboard at workshoplive.com. Afternoons are spent singing a broad range of songs from Gregorian chant to Beatles, learning the blues, studying different styles of music, theory, songwriting, and how all this relates to our own consciousness. It's a thrill to be able to share all that I've learned with these lively beings, and the other faculty and administration I have met with are hoping that the music courses here will grow and expand in the coming year. Next week I'll lead a songwriting workshop with kids at the Maharishi School, 3rd to 6th grade, and use the songs they write for the performance of ROBIN HOOD the following week, in which I'll be joined by some of the students in my class on guitar, percussion, bass and keyboard. It's an exciting place to be and I hope to come back in the fall.

2009-03-26T10:32:00.004-04:00

Since December I've been writing a weekly column for the Lakeville Journal in northwest CT. I was looking forward to writing about the Crescendo Chorus' tribute to Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn on Sunday afternoon at Trinity Church in Lime Rock but due to schedule conflicts, I only caught the second half, so the paper will not publish these comments. For the record...

What I did hear was a sublime hour of ravishingly beautiful vocal music, interspersed with readings of letters exchanged between brother and sister and some of their circle of friends and family. Both music and letters ranged from poignant to exuberant, with the highlight being Felix's setting of Psalm 100, which calls for a solo quartet in addition to the choir. The soloists included the glorious soprano Julianne Baird, and their blend was exquisitely balanced. The chorus sounded better than I have ever heard them, with a rich, round tone, perfect diction and consistently in fine tune. In Psalm 22 the lines were lean and clear and the eight-part harmonies had both depth and transparency.

The two pieces by Fanny were charming, especially the solo song “Die Nonne,” sung by Ms. Baird and sensitively accompanied by Kevin Jones, but not in the same league as the works of her brother, whose music soars into angelic realms phrase after phrase. Tragically both composers died of strokes in their mid-40's. What might have resulted from longer lives staggers the imagination. The force behind this whole concert was the treasured conductor, Christine Gevert, whose passion and musicality infused all the pieces with drive and spiritually satisfying profundity. Some muddiness of attack and choral pitch crept into Psalm 91 and the Bach chorale that ended the concert, but not enough to disturb the overall impression of thoughtful, careful attention to detail.

Micheaux, Dryer and more

2009-03-12T14:49:00.003-04:00

Well, February has come and gone, and my best intentions to keep writing were snowed under (sometimes literally when we lost power for a while) but there's been a lot of action this winter. The Film Society of Lincoln Center presented a series on black film, beginning with Oscar Micheaux's BODY AND SOUL, for which I was joined by the magnificent bass Kevin Maynor, who compiled a stunning collection of spirituals and art songs to complement the film. He entered from the rear of the Walter Reade Theatre, singing a rousing spiritual, walked up onstage to his stand by the Steinway grand where I was seated, and the film began to roll. Only...it was BODY AND SOUL starring Humphrey Bogart, Charles Farrell and Myrna Loy (1931). You can imagine our confusion. I stopped playing and said to the audience, "Well, this is interesting." A few moments later, it was sorted out and a DVD projection, not at all bad quality, filled the screen and we continued without further mishap. Kevin got a standing ovation and many people said it was a tremendous performance.

The series also included the NY premiere of THE FLYING ACE, a wonderful action pic with director Richard Norman's grandson introducing the film, along with representatives from the silent film museum being created in Jacksonville.

Next week it's off to Syracuse for the Cinefest, a new experience for me. Joanna will come along, and I'm sure lots of friends we haven't seen in a while will be there. More from the road...

From Rags to Riches

2009-01-29T13:44:00.009-05:00

Here's a memento of the THIEF OF BAGDAD performance last month. From L to R: author Jeffrey Vance, Vera Fairbanks, widow of Douglas Jr., author Tony Maietta, and your blogger. We had a great dinner together with Patrick Harrison of AMPAS, and I'm looking forward to reading the Fairbanks book.

I took a trip last weekend to West Seattle's charming Kenyon Hall and played a program of rags by Joplin, Bolcom, and others, as well as illlustrating a lecture by Larry Karp about his series of mysteries based on the life of Scott Joplin. I'm having a great time reading the first one, THE RAGTIME KID, which follows the adventures of young Brun Campbell, a young ragtime pianist from Oklahoma, who comes to Sedalia in Missouri to take piano lessons from Joplin.

Karp whose first profession was physician, has a string of other books to his credit, and in this one, “The Ragtime Kid” (Poisoned Pen Press, 2008), he’s done a remarkable job of bringing the lively milieu of the ragtime era to the page. Campbell is a likable hero who runs away from home at age 15 to meet his idol, and on his first night in Sedalia literally trips over the body of a young woman. A money clip with a tiny music box lies nearby, and soon Brun discovers it belonged to Joplin.

Thoroughly researched, this book is teeming with detail about commerce, bordello life, race relations and the music publishing industry, all of which fueled this invented plot. “The Ragtime Kid” is a real page turner that sent me back to my collection of Joplin’s rags to refresh my memory about the individual pieces that figure in the story.

Joplin’s career is truly fascinating, and although it ends unhappily with a mental and physical decline, the first part of his life is an important part of American musical history. “The Maple Leaf Rag” (1899) was the first piece of sheet music to sell over a million copies and established Joplin as a major composer who shunned the slapdash works that permeated the music industry of the time and strove to create an American equivalent of the salon music of Chopin and Schubert. Karp’s sequel, “The King of Ragtime,” follows Joplin to New York where he becomes implicated in a murder in Irving Berlin’s office. I am looking forward to the final volume.

An audience of about 100 drank in the details of Karp's talk about life in Sedalia Missouri, sipped the fabulous root beer floats, and enjoyed my impromptu raggy version of "Hail to the Chief," one of a couple of suggestions from the audience for takeoffs on familiar pieces.

The following night I played for Mabel Normand's first Keystone, The Water Nymph, and a later film, The Nickel Hopper, plus A Corner in Wheat (Griffith, 1909) and When the Clouds Roll By with Douglas Fairbanks. Quite a full evening that didn't see me in bed till midnight Seattle time, when my physiology wearily proclaimed it to be 3am.

Here's a rag that I wrote for the occasion:

First you need a little introductory phrase, maybe something like this

Now we have a secton we'll call A
to take it away and get things rolling
It's got to swing a bit, jiggle and sing a bit
Left hand steady while the right hand's ready to
   Syncopate, it's a
   Little late, it's a
   Bit behind, but you'll find it's not that
Bad, it won't make you sad
You'll be glad you heard the
Self-Referential Rag

Typically this section repeats again
To keep it symmetrical, continue strolling
Swinging the phrase while the bass always stays
Just nice and steady so the right hand's ready to
Syncopate, it's a
Little late, it's a
Bit behind, or perhaps ahead but never
On the beat so you can tap your feet
To the Self-Referential Rag

Now we modulate, you see,
To another tune in another key, and
Change.....
The rhythm to a
Different style
All the while
Keeping that bass going
Back and forth Rock
steady down south
While up in the north the
Melody wanders, the audience ponders
Where it will go, the pianist don't know
He's making it up as he sings the cho-rus of the
Self-referential rag.

Now the last strain
I't's cutting loose
Like a long freight train
That's lost its caboose
It's running amok
And with a little luck
It'll end pretty soon
Before I explode
I'm gonna overload
And pop my top
LIke a New Year's cracker
or a paper bag
That's the Self-Referential
Quite insconsequential
Don't be deferential to this
Rather inessential
Self-Referential Rag!

©2009 Farmhouse Window Productions
All rights reserved.

Catching up

2009-01-14T21:42:00.005-05:00

Wow, I can't believe it's two months since I wrote. I have been coughing most of that time, having caught the throat thing. It's finally leaving, I think. When not otherwise hacking, I have been working on various things: a Shimizu film for Criterion, JAPANESE GIRLS AT THE HARBOR, which I finally finished in the wee hours of this morning and delivered through the magic of ftp, saving 5 hours in the car, untold gallons of gas, and enabling me to sleep off the mostly all-nighter.

Other film events of this time period included two performances of DOCKS OF NEW YORK, both with Joanna singing songs from the period such as "LUCKY DAY," which meshed nicely with many of the title cards and themes of the film. The first show was at the Walter Reade for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and a week later we drove to Washington to perform for a capacity audience at the National Gallery.

In December I returned to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in NY, bringing my Roland keyboard for THIEF OF BAGDAD, which we decided to show at sound speed, the only alternative to 18fps they could provide. It was fine that way; some of the scenes work better a tad slower, but as Ben Model wrote about Robin Hood in a recent blog, it creates a different feeling of excitement to boost the tempo a bit. I will be playing for WHEN THE CLOUDS ROLL BY in Seattle next week and I have a feeling we will face the same situation there.

Last week I spent a delightful four days at Bailey Elementary School with Paul Reisler, the director of Kid Pan Alley, writing songs with about 200 2nd and 3rd graders, who performed their works for a packed house of their parents and classmates at the end of the week. Paul has posted some wonderful photos of this at kidpanalley.org/news.html.

Now that the Japanese girls are safely aboard ship (well, one of them, anyway), I am turning my attention to some live shows in NY: JEWISH LUCK on Sunday at the Walter Reade, a repeat from last year, but this time part of the Jewish Film Festival. Then the Seattle shows, one of which is a ragtime concert with Larry Karp talking about his two ragtime-themed novels.

February brings a wave of Oscar Micheaux films to Lincoln Center, and at the first of them, BODY AND SOUL, I'll be joined by the astounding bass Kevin Maynor, singing spirituals. Check out his recordings on Youtube and try to make the show, it should be a great event.

In March it's a Dreyer series at BAM, more about that soon. I have to go practice my ragtime, as well as the two shows I'm music directing up here in Connecticut: MUSIC MAN at the Salisbury School, and ALICE IN WONDERLAND, JR. for the terrific children's theater company in Falls Village.

But first, a long rest......

MANHATTA at MoMA

2008-11-17T11:58:00.003-05:00

MANHATTA (1921), the first American avant-garde film, brought the talents of painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand together to give motion to the New York cityscapes they had each captured in still frames. The resulting 10-minute film was shown a few times in the 20's, then disappeared for almost 30 years. Till now it has only been available in a very blurry, damaged version that has circulated widely, and can be seen on numerous websites with a variety of musical accompaniments. Critics have always considered the film a great milestone in American cinema, and praised its composition and lyrical quality, despite the poor picture quality.

Now the film has been digitally restored by archivist and filmmaker Bruce Posner, and the results are something to cheer about. Posner showed the new version for the first time in the US at the Museum of Modern Art Friday and Saturday (it was screened at the Pordenone silent film festival and at the London Film Festival in October) to sold-out audiences who got to compare the old and new versions, and learned about the various methods used in cleaning up the print.

To accompany the film, I was asked to create an orchestral score from the synthesized version I composed three years ago as part of the Unseen Cinema project, in which Manhatta and 150 other short films were gathered together in a 7-DVD box. I scored a number of these films then, including A BRONX MORNING, $24 ISLAND, SKYSCRAPER SYMPHONY, LIFE AND DEATH OF A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA, ANEMIC CINEMA, and GHOST TRAIN. Starting with an improvisation while watching each film, I expanded some of the material, added other instruments to a basic string or piano track, and went on to the next short. MANHATTA itself was written in about half an hour's worth of short takes, and the synthesized orchestration took a couple of days. I wrote in an accessible Copland-y style, and tried to give a sense of what I felt was essentially a very silent city, despite billowing smokestacks, the bustle of Staten Island ferry commuters, tugboats and steamships.

Making this music playable by a 39-piece ensemble was a more involved process. I went back to the finished synth track, which had been recorded in Digital Performer without any kind of a click track or reference to bar lines. I tapped a metronome beat along with the music to create a score that made sense time-wise, adding meter changes and revising tempos to fit the timing of the new print.

Then I transferred the digital information as a MIDI file to Finale, the notation program I have used for 20 years and spent about two weeks orchestrating the score, which calls for woodwinds in pairs, two horns, trumpet, trombone, percussion, timpani, piano and strings. With a few keystrokes the program extracted instrumental parts from the score, and although it's supposed to be pretty automatic, in practice there are always things to tweak: the placement of measure numbers, dynamic expressions, tempo indications that collide with notes, etc. I spoke about all this at MoMA and showed some examples of the files I had been working on.

Finally everything was ready to deliver to the conductor, my dear friend Peter Breiner, whom I had met in Bratislava 25 years ago during recording sessions with my mentor, William Perry. Bill had brought me there to orchestrate some of the songs from WIND IN THE WILLOWS, which I had conducted and arranged for its premiere at the Folger Theatre in Washington. Peter, the producer of these sessions, is a consummate composer/arranger/conductor/pianist; he and I chatted about music inbetween takes, and became quick friends. But he wouldn't talk politics in those Communist and probably bugged environs until we were in his car 50km out of town and he felt he could whisper that conditions weren't so good.
We parted, not knowing if we would ever see each other again.

But we stayed in touch, at first by snail mail. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, he resettled in Toronto, and we saw each other a few times as I went there or he came here to conduct. Finally, in 2007 had the chance to move to Manhattan. You can imagine the incredulous joy of our reunion in his triplex in a renovated co-op on the Lower East Side, complete with concert grand and a view of the Chrysler Building.

Peter was already performing in Kosice in March, so he was able to piggyback our recording session with the orchestra there, in a fine concert hall originally built as a synagogue but never used for that purpose. The recording was done in 14 channels, and all the audio files were transferred to a little USB drive that I took out to Chace labs in Burbank to be mixed from the takes I had chosen.

The silent 35mm film runs at 16 frames per second, too slow to add a soundtrack, which requires 24 fps for a steady, reliable pitch without flutter. So the music was on a CD, and I stood next to the projectionist, making sure that film and music stayed together, requiring a slight increase or decrease in speed every 15 seconds or so: a live performance of a film to recorded music!

It was a treat to have both Peter and Bill there at the Friday night shows.

So we have come full circle: Bill was playing at MoMA when I wrote to him in 1971, having heard his wonderful scores for THE MARK OF ZORRO and ORPHANS OF THE STORM on PBS, and when I moved to NYC I began subbing for him, and when he left the museum, became its regular accompanist. These days I play there every couple of weeks. Today's film was HEARTS OF THE WORLD, a repeat of 2 weeks ago, and the 50 or so people who came cheered for the Yanks and laughed at some of the sillier moments, and had nice things to say about my score afterwards. Not a terrific film, but has many wonderful small moments and beautiful photography.

A day of rest and then back to BAM for MOCKERY on Tuesday.

Superman in Northampton, MANHATTA in Manhattan

2008-11-08T23:53:00.011-05:00

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a 12-piece orchestra (2 of them, actually, one in Northampton MA and one in Portland OR) playing new scores for 6 Superman cartoons from the 40's. The bi-coastal events took place last night to cheering crowds in those cities, too far for me to get to both, but close enough to leap in a single bound for our hero. I wrote a score for BILLION DOLLAR LIMITED, and my friend Makia Matsumura, who was one of our piano trainees in Pordenone last year, did another. Met a third composer who came up from Florida, Jesse Hopkins, and we all enjoyed watching the superb projections of the cartoons accompanied by our scores, played by students from Amherst under the baton of Brazilian conductor Lanfranco Marcelletti, Jr.

The Arts and Leisure section of today's NY TImes (11/9) has an
article by Dave Kehr about the MANHATTA premiere this coming weekend.

I'll be playing for ORPHANS OF THE STORM at BAM Tues. at 7, and then heading back to the city for the 2 MANHATTA shows. My orchestral score will be played in the fine recording Peter Breiner did this spring; he'll be there too. Bruce Posner will talk about the process of digitally restoring the film and I will show a clip of the recording session, as well as improvise to other NY films.

And next Sunday is a repeat performance of HEARTS OF THE WORLD, which was very well received last week at MoMA.

Lots to do, so it's time to hit the hay!

Two weeks in Virginia

2008-11-06T13:29:00.002-05:00

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Nov. 2-The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of writing songs with hundreds of 2nd-4th graders in Virginia under the banner of Paul Reisler's wonderful Kid Pan Alley program. The first week I worked with Nashville singer-songwriter Kathy Hussey at the Leslie Fox Keyser School in Front Royal, where we turned out eight songs in four days and performed them for a screaming throng on Friday. Titles included "I Wish I Was a Wild Pony" and "Mummies Have Mommies Too."

Then I moved down to Charlottesville and worked with Paul and another fine balladeer, Terri Allard, with whom I had worked last year. At the extraordinary Jackson-Via Elementary School we worked from 8:30 to 2:30 every day, with little time to catch our breath. The kids were terrific, and were jumping all over with some dance songs. By Friday we had 10 fine songs and the school's superb principal, Dr. Elizabeth McCay, joined us onstage for some of the shenanigans. "What Makes Scary Things Go Away," another appropriate Halloween song, was a big hit, as well as "Why Can't My Pets Do My Chores?"

As we did last year, we also wrote songs to present at the program of silents Jo and I brought to the Virginia Film Festival. While in 2007 the kids sang during the screening of PETER PAN, we decided to try having them write songs about the films in question but sing them as preludes. This worked very well and we would repeat this approach again.

Back for our 6th year at the festival, Joanna and I created a show we called "Strangers in Strange Lands" to tie in with this year's festival theme of aliens and immigrants. So the films were JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, ALICE IN WONDERLAND and THE IMMIGRANT. About 35 kids were onstage, with Terri singing, and the accompaniment of Paul's guitar and my synth. The family audience at the splendid Paramount Theatre loved the program, sang along with Jo on the chorus of "East Side, West Side" and other bits in the show. Jo wrote some very sweet rhymed couplets for JACK, and we took turns reading the titles in ALICE to save the parents having to do the same thing to their toddlers. People said they really enjoyed all our different character voices, so we might look for other films to treat this way.

With that behind us, we could relax. We didn't see many films this year, but the ones we did get to were exceptional: the new Sissy Spacek movie, LAKE CITY, about a dysfunctional family in rural Virginia and the consequences of a drug deal gone bad. Great acting by her and co-star Troy Garity (Jane Fonda's son...she was there but we didn't get to see her). Paul introduced us to Sissy, who had recorded a song for him, and we spent a few minutes talking with her. Very charming and a soft presence. Talked with Troy, and the writers/directors of the film whose other credits include producing the Narnia films.

After our show Saturday we saw TERRA, a very cool computer-animated film about refugees from Earth attempting to colonize a distant planet, at the expense of the peaceful inhabitants. In the evening, THE BURNING PLAIN, a deeply moving story by Mexican writer/director Guillermo Arriaga (21 GRAMS). He spoke humorously at the Q & A, moderated by insightful film professor Hamid Naficy from Northwestern whom we got to know at our inn. At the closing night party we munched croissants, had a beer and talked for several minutes with Arriaga about the film and the production in general. Our stay ended with a chat at breakfast with Gregory Nava (EL NORTE) who spoke to us about his love of silent films, and we discussed the possibility of presenting something in LA for him.

All in all an amazing, exhausting, happy two weeks.

More soon from the NY film world.

Off to Pordenone

2008-10-01T13:58:00.003-04:00

Well, I never wrote about San Francisco...played for MIKAEL (Dryer) and THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (Reiniger) and saw some wonderful other films, among them HER WILD OAT and THE PATSY (go, Marion Davies!). Then I had a bunch of films at MoMA in August and September, including WAY DOWN EAST with Joanna singing, as we did in Pordenone two years ago and Lincoln Center last summer.

I've been working on rescoring one of the Superman cartoons from the 40's over the past week and hope to finish by next week for performances in Portland OR and Northampton MA in November. But tomorrow Joanna and I leave for Pordenone to perform at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto. We'll be doing a program of songs from the early 20th century that are all about going to the cinema, with special guest Jean Darling of Our Gang and the original cast of Carousel.

Joanna will sing along with my accompaniments for SALLY OF THE SAWDUST and LADY OF THE PAVEMENTS, both directed by D. W. Griffith. And I will also be playing for a couple of other films and coaching aspiring pianists in the seminar each morning.

The orchestral score I wrote for the digital restoration of MANHATTA (1920) will open Monday night's program, with the beautiful recording by Peter Breiner and the Slovak Sinfonietta done in March. This is the world premiere of this version of the film. Other performances this fall will take place at the Times/BFI London Film Festival and at MoMA.
Stay tuned for reports from Pordenone!

Best
Donald

Rehearsing DOCKS OF NEW YORK in Bologna

2008-07-30T15:54:00.000-04:00

Here's a little video from Bologna. Gabriel Thibaudeau of Montreal can be seen for a minute, as he took my laptop and shot in a panoramic style (very French) while I tried out the Yamaha for the evening screening of DOCKS OF NEW YORK on the 4th of July.

Bologna silents

2008-07-30T06:31:00.000-04:00

Bologna's annual Cinema Ritrovato was the typical whirlwind of films in the Lumière, catching up with friends, walks in the hot sunny Italian summer to our favorite gelato place to cool off, balmy nights in the Piazza Maggiore every night. I managed to see a paltry 27 programs during the week in addition to the 10 I played for. Gotta eat, gotta meditate...

I had the pleasure of meeting Joseph von Sternberg's son Nick, and we had a few nice conversations about his father's work. What came through was a quiet admiration for the quality and scope of his dad's achievements, which we grew to appreciate a great deal as the week unfolded. Joanna's cousin Nancy, who had grown up with a friend who lived across the hall from Marlene Dietrich, joined us for the week and saw six of her films: MOROCCO, BLONDE VENUS, DISHONORED, THE SCARLET EMPRESS, SHANGHAI EXPRESS, and THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN. I guess SCARLET EMPRESS was my favorite from the standpoint of a riveting blend of images and film. It seemed that fully half the picture was a silent film with a score compiled from practically everything Tchaikowsky wrote, nicely woven together for the most part (some strange musical edits from symphonies to March Slav, if memory serves. It's a month since viewing, almost. Also seemed as though much of the action in these scenes had been timed to the music, rather than music edited to action. Horses and soldiers arrived on cue. Were they playing music on set, or someone using a metronome and cueing the horsemen?

The lighting effects: nets, grids, shadows, looked splendid on the big screen at the Arlecchino, and I got to play for DOCKS OF NEW YORK in the piazza on July 4 for a crowd of around 2500. The evening began with our friend Gabriel Thibaudeau playing a delightful score for THE IMMIGRANT, bringing out lots of humor that can pass by in a more generic accompaniment. The throwing of the dice, the contrast between the view of the Statue of Liberty and the subsequent roping in of the passengers, and the café scene antics were all wonderfully supported. Bravo, Gabriel!

I worked all week and some of the week before, when we were in Portugal, on DOCKS, creating a number of themes for the characters and trying to find the right feel for the film. (Kept wanting to play ON THE WATERFRONT...) I don't know if I succeeded, but the audience liked the film, and as a former teacher once said, "Well, you started and ended together, that's the main thing..."

I felt better about my work for CHILDREN OF DIVORCE, a lovely romantic drama with Clara Bow and Gary Cooper, as well as Sternberg's first silent feature, SALVATION HUNTERS, a stark portrayal of poverty and street life, with the recurring image of a huge dredge that gives the picture a documentary quality much of the time. Where I gave CHILDREN a more typical romantic tone, here I went in the Copland-y direction that I used for MANHATTA, despite misgivings. It's a tough audience in Bologna, crowd reactions during the day are often very muted and it's hard to get a sense of how things are going. Sometimes I feel like I'm a surgeon performing an operation with a crowd of students in the gallery...

But people did comment positively afterwards on these scores, as well as those for the three programs of 1908 shorts that I did, the usual mix of fiction, docs and some trick films that were very enjoyable to see. Outstanding were some Swiss gymnastics shorts that kept me guessing about tempi and lengths of shots. Fun to do.

All in all, a great week, and I'll write more about other films soon, as well as describing the San Francisco festival, which followed the next weekend.

New silent film music

2008-02-16T07:08:00.000-05:00

Hi, all...just wanted to let you know I have finished the music for the new Ozu set coming out in April from Criterion. These films are really wonderful, and I hope you'll enjoy the 20's style music. The features are I WAS BORN BUT... , PASSING FANCY and TOKYO CHORUS. They will all have Japanese and English titles.

The gigantic Méliès set will hit the street (where it will likely bounce off, explode, turn into flowers and grasshoppers and so forth) in a couple of weeks. My contributions to the set are:
THE ASTRONOMER'S DREAM 4 min
CINDERELLA (1899 version) hand colored 5 1/2 mins
CHRISTMAS DREAM approx 4 1/4 min.
A CRAZY COMPOSER 5 min.
THE GOOD SHEPHERDESS AND THE EVIL PRINCESS (13'31")
THE NEW LORD OF THE VILLAGE (8'48")
NOT GUILTY (9'59")
THE MISER (4'50")
SIGHTSEEING THROUGH WHISKEY (5'35")
[UNIDENTIFIED FRAGMENT] (1'30")
CAKEWALK INFERNAL (5'19")
JUSTINIAN'S HUMAN TORCHES 548 A.D. (2'56")
SOAP BUBBLES (2'30")
THE MERRY FROLICS OF SATAN (11'34").

Finally, Bruce Posner is putting the finishing touches on a gorgeous digital restoration of MANHATTA, and I am in the process of revising and orchestrating the synthesized score I wrote for the the UNSEEN CINEMA collection. The music will be recorded in March in Slovakia by a fine 40-piece orchestra conducted by my dear friend Peter Breiner, and TCM will screen the film sometime later this year. Watch this space for details, as well as my website, htttp://www.oldmoviemusic.com

Live performances coming up: POTEMKIN at the Harvard Film Archive Mar. 17, Uchida's POLICEMAN (KEISATSUKAN) at BAM Apr. 29, and EVERLASTING LOVE with Lydia Borelli at BAM May 13.

Finally, if anyone knows of a DVD of EXIT SMILING that can be shown publicly, I would be very grateful. There are film versions available through Eastman and BFI, but the theater I am working with only has platters, and the archives won't allow them to be shown that way. And there is no room in the booth to bring in 16mm for the occasion. Please help! Thanks.

Harold Lloyd in New York

2008-02-10T08:01:00.000-05:00

It's a snowy Saturday night in Germantown, NY, but about 50 people came out for a fundraising potluck dinner and a screening of SAFETY LAST with Harold Lloyd, with my live synth accompaniment. Joanna, who would normally play percussion and sing, was in Florida, lucky girl, so I did the show myself. Lots of little kids, which was great, including a blond-haired 7 yr. old girl who came up to me beforehand and asked, wide-eyed, "Are you really going to play the piano?" Yes, I said, not just really, but 4-reeely!" I explained what that meant. Later she came back again and asked, "Are you really going to four play?" I thought about that one for a minute and went back to my earlier explanation...

The film went well, people loved it, most had never seen a silent with live music. They asked questions and bought DVDs. Emma, the girl, it turns out, plays piano and won a local competition for creating a piano piece, which was sent on to the next level. So I expect to see her name in lights someday.

I finished scoring TOKYO CHORUS and PASSING FANCY for the Criterion box set, and am working to finish I WAS BORN BUT... in the next two days, then start on a wonderful project I will write about next week.

Jai Guru Dev! His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Vijayante Taram

2008-02-05T22:28:00.000-05:00

My beloved Master, His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, left the physical realm today, February 5, 2008, but he will dwell forever in my heart. I am profoundly grateful to him for the knowledge he has given me and the millions of others who have taken his simple teachings to heart and leaqrned to experience the unbounded field of pure consciousness that lies within all of us, within everything in creation.

Thank you, Maharishi, for everything that you have taught me and will continue to teach me. I cannot imagine my life without the silence that is always inside me, thanks to you, and thanks to Guru Dev. All glory to Guru Dev and may the extraordinary work that you did in His name continue to spread and fill the world with bliss. Jai Guru Dev. Jai Guru Dev. Jai Guru Dev.

2008 in the Silent Film Music world

2008-01-31T12:11:00.000-05:00

Well, I intend to write more often this year! That's my first New Year's resolution on this page. The fall was a whirlwind of silent film performances and workshops, including appearances at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in September, talking to composition students, then a trip to Syracuse NY to work with local high school and Le Moyne College music students. Joanna and I demonstrated different ways of treating the same film scenes, and then the students had a chance to join us and create their own music for a Keaton clip and some avant-garde shorts. We had a great crowd at the Palace Theater for our presentation of the original KING KONG, using the DVD with subtitles and replacing the wonderful Steiner score with our live synth, screaming and Tyrannosaurus snarls (thanks to our friend Aaron Pichel who came down from Ithaca to help out with that!)

We went next to the College of Staten Island and after the workshop, showed TABU with our music. Joanna's percussion and singing blended with my synthesizer orchestra.

Then I was off to Pordenone for the annual festival there, and played for a few Griffith films (AMERICA, THE WHITE ROSE) and a great Dupont film, DAS ALTE GESETZ, which would be wonderful to show here this year.

The Virginia Film Festival invited us back for the 5th time at the end of October, and I had the chance to bring together two of my friends to enliven the proceedings. Stewart Stern, who wrote REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, came to introduce that fabulous film, as well as PETER PAN, which is the basis for his story. I had met songwriter/teacher Paul Reisler, director of Kid Pan Alley, early in the summer, and he and I, along with Charlottesville songwriter Terri Allard, worked with 200 kids during the week before the festival, writing songs, three of them for the film. We put this all together in a spectacular show at the Paramount Theater for 500 people. Joanna introduced Stewart (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwBP237fWBU), who spoke about his lifelong love of Peter Pan, then Paul and Terri led the kids in one of their songs, Joanna sang "Never-Never Land" and we showed the 1924 film by Herbert Brenon, with Betty Bronson in the title role. The kids were great and the festival would like to have us to a similar event every year, they said.

A week later Joanna and I brought Layne Longfellow and his cousin Ann Hutchinson Guest to the National Gallery for a 200th birthday celebration of Longfellow poetry, read by Layne, and the silent film EVANGELINE, with Joanna singing and my music. This was a memorable occasion for all of us. Vicki Toye, the great-great-granddaughter of the village blacksmith Longfellow wrote about, actually works at the National Gallery, so for her to share the stage with Ann, Longfellow's great-granddaughter, was quite a moment.

A few other films rounded out the year. There were Danish films at BAM, including the curious A TRIP TO MARS, and HELEN'S BABIES with Baby Peggy and Clara Bow at Lincoln Center.

Clara and I made a trip to Port Townsend, Washington's delightful Rose Theatre last weekend, where I played for two screenings of IT. And in Kenyon Hall, a jewel of a little theater on Seattle's West side, BLOOD AND SAND (Valentino) followed by MUD AND SAND (Stan Laurel) made a great double bill.

Back in NY, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is in the middle of a Russian film program, and I contributed my score for POTEMKIN last night. More news on these programs on my website: http://www.oldmoviemusic.com. Coming events: SAFETY LAST in Germantown, NY, and two Vertov films in March at the Harvard Film Archive. Hope to see you there! Best, Donald

Hollyhock

2007-08-17T12:02:00.000-04:00

Hollyhock. Cortes Island, British Columbia

Just got out of the hot tub, watching the sun rise over the pine-covered hills, with the gentle water inbetween, and the distant snow-capped peaks tinged with a soft pink. It's been amazing here, and I feel that I have been given a great gift, getting to know Paul and his wife Julie Portman, a consummate actress, writer, and director who coached us on performance one afternoon. I have met people that feel like way old friends, and the songwriting group itself, nine of us, were a happy compatible bunch who supported each other in our work and in the barrage of emotions that came up in the process of listening to each other tell stories about our lives and turning them into song.

Hollyhock itself is a small place like the Omega Institute or Esalen (though not a gated community like Esalen-it welcomes visitors for meals and various events), can handle 100 visitors, has a radiantly beautiful garden of many varieities of flowers whose names I have yet to learn, but among them are gigantic hollyhocks and a different and larger strain of clematis than we have at home. I've been tenting these past 5 nights in a quiet area surrounded by ferns, and the sound of strange birds.

The food is mostly vegetarian and lovely to look at in its presentation. But we also had some great salmon the other night, and another night an appetizer of both raw and grilled oysters down by the beach. I have never liked oysters before, but these were scrumptious. Guess I'm spoiled now.

Yesterday was the end of our workshop and we each presented the song we had been working on for the past few days. I had heard the story of a 19-year old boy from Duluth who has just moved with his family to this area. And a guy from Victoria who works with disabled people singing songs for them wrote a song for me based on my telling him about playing board games with Nick. Afterwards I asked Paul if he bought stock in Kleenex. Saying goodbye to everyone (I'm staying this one extra day and they all left) was equally emotional. It was as powerful an experience as leaving music camp the second year and knowing I would not see these people again for a long time. But of course, now we all have email, etc. and have promised to keep in touch, and there has been talk of inviting me out to northern California and elsewhere to do films.

Concurrent with our workshop there was a yoga workshop with about 30 attendees, and then people who wanted to come and chill for however long they could. A number of the people I have met here are residents of the island, transplanted New Yorkers-families or singles my age who find Cortes Island an ideal place to either vacation or do their artistic work. Total population 1000 plus an equal number of summer folk. Very laid-back, no locks, no police, just fishing, a lot of boating, camping, being. Last night there was a concert up the road by a teen program called Power of Hope which brings inner city as well as yuppy kids together for a few weeks to work on empowering themselves, expressing themselves through poetry, dance, song, art. The level of abilities was very, very high. Poetry reminiscent of Alan Ginsberg by a 15-year old lashing out at Bush and the establishment and hoping for an apocalypse. Merlin and Cosmo, the almost college-age sons of Rupert Sheldrake, the noted British biologist. Cosmo did beat-boxing with his mouth and layered a bunch of different rhythms on an electronic loop device so he was his own one-man band, then played jazz over it. Merlin played stride piano with a style that I have only heard from really good people like Dick Hyman. A 250-pound girl with Downs syndrome doing a sexy dance in a flowing purple gown. Folk songs, tangos, and finally a song that Paul had written with a group of them about their camp. A great event. People said I should come back and work with them, too. Maybe next year...

Well, off to meditate, then breakfast and a morning debriefing with Paul, who would like to do a lot more work with me. He gave me a chance to assist him in many of the classes, teaching harmony or chord structure, and I also led a small group each morning before the official workshop for people who wanted to learn to read music. Paul was very appreciative, and I was very grateful for all the praise and acknowledgement that was heaped on me. It was a chance to be who I am and do what I do best and it connected in a deep way and transformed and uplifted me. I cried a lot, during, afterwards. We all did.

I wish you all a peaceful and joyous August and hope to see everyone soon.

God bless you all,

Love

Donnie

Long time no C major!

2007-03-11T22:37:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's been a long time since I wrote...so many films, so much Italian food. My website has a fuller description, and we have a new name for it, too: oldmoviemusic.com, so click over and check it out. Meanwhile, I will be posting here on at least a monthly basis so you can look forward to news about upcoming films, like the AMMI Fashion series (FIG LEAVES, Sun. Mar. 18 at 2pm) and the Tarrytown Music Hall series of family films including PETER PAN, SPEEDY and SON OF THE SHEIK coming in April. I'm preparing some Melies, Ozu and other films for DVD release, and working on a course in beginning piano that I'll be teaching online in the near future. Stay tuned and say hi!

Best,
Donald

Fall 2005 schedule

2005-09-26T10:52:00.000-04:00

Hi there. It's a busy season for silent film screenings in NY and around the country! I played for the opening of the Shochiku retrospective at Lincoln Center yesterday, a film called SOULS ON THE ROAD, which will be followed tomorrow by A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS and EVERY NIGHTS DREAM. Here is the complete schedule for the next few months as of today:

Sept. 18 1:30 pm and Sept. 19 7pm Gösta Berlings Saga,with Greta Garbo, at MoMA.
Sept. 18 5pm and Sept. 19 5pm Freudlosse Gasse, with Greta Garbo, at MoMA.
Sept. 25 2:30pm Souls on the Road at Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theatre
(Shochiku Retrospective of NYFF)
Sept. 27 6:15pm A Story of Floating Weeds at Lincoln Center
Sept. 27 8:30pm Every Night's Dream at Lincoln Center
Sept. 30 Foolish Wives Pine Bluff (Arkansas) Film Festival, with Joanna Seaton, vocals,
and Nick Sosin, trombone and percussion

Oct. 4 7pm Japanese Girls at the Harbor at Lincoln Center
Oct. 5 5:30pm and 8:30pm Flesh and the Devil, with Greta Garbo at Scandinavia House
Oct. 8-15 The Scarlet Letter, Souls on the Road and others at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Sacile, Italy
Oct. 19 5:30pm and 8:30pm A Woman of Affairs with Greta Garbo, at Scandinavia House
Oct. 20 7pm Captain January and Helen's Babies at BAM
Oct. 22 3pm Enoch Arden and The Lily and the Rose at BAM
Oct. 22 5:30pm Underground at BAM
Oct. 22 8pm The Triumph of the Rat at BAM
Oct. 23 3pm A Cottage on Dartmoor at BAM
Oct. 23 7:30pm Cheng the Fruit Seller and The Pearl Necklace at Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theatre
Oct. 24 7pm The Peach Girl at Lincoln Center
Oct. 24 9pm A Spray of Plum Blossoms at Lincoln Center
Oct. 29 4:30pm The Kid Brother at Virginia Film Festival, Charlottesville,
with Joanna Seaton, vocals, and Nick Sosin, trombone
Nov. 2 at 5:30pm Gösta Berlings Saga at Scandinavia House
Nov. 5 at 6:00pm  Souls on the Road (Rojou no reikon) Minoru Murata, 1921 at Pacific Film Archives, Berkeley
Nov. 5 at 9:00pm  The Golden Bullet (Ogon no dangan) Hiroshi Innami, 1926 at PFA
Preceded by short: To the Reborn Imperial Capital by Airship (Kokusen nite fukko no teito e)
Nov. 6 at 3:30pm  Eternal Heart (Fue no shiratama) Hiroshi Shimizu, 1929 at PFA
Preceded by short: The Sumida River (Sumida-gawa) 1931
Nov. 6 at 6:30pm  Rebirth of the Capital (Teito fukko, a.k.a. Rebirth of the Imperial Capital)
Hamataro Oda, Asajiro Itoi, 1930 at PFA
Nov. 10 at 5:30pm and Nov. 12 at 3pm The Kiss at Scandinavia House

Odessa and Budapest

2004-07-22T07:14:00.000-04:00

Dear Family,

Safe in our familiar room at the Hotel Palace in
Bologna. We really enjoyed Budapest, ate well and
cheaply in little cafes and hole-in-the-wall
restaurants. Visited the synagogue (so who was there
among you ? Deb, did you sing there? Mom & Dad?) One
more day and we could have made it to the Holocaust
memorial, but too much to do in two short days when
one's first priority is....EATING! Only slightly
kidding. The strudel was phenomenal (carried some
here and had it for lunch dessert today) and had an
amazing dish of some kind of cabbage, rice and meat
yesterday. Tried to find a tiny Jewish restaurant
we'd read about, but after winding through little
streets discovered it was closed for renovations for
a month, and the Jewish bakery we'd been recommended
to was only open MWF and it was Th. Oh well. Next
time. We'd go back. Our hotel was just terrific, a
very light and spacious two room suite with
skylights, a balcony where we ran a clothesline I'd
brought. Nick slept on the day bed and
we had a separate bedroom where the rain thundered
on the pulldown windows last night, the first rain
of our trip. In the morning the doves coo,
"Adooooooooopt me, A dooooooopt me, " or "I
loooooooove you," or "A struuuuuuuuuuuudel," or "The
Czaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar stinks," depending on your frame
of mind.

Odessa was quite interesting and beautiful around
the harbor where we walked down the famous steps and
across to the harbor, then huffed and puffed back up
the steps. Strolled around the souvenir market and
bought trinkets and a beautiful Matrozhka (nesting
doll) with a suite Ukrainian face, skipping the ones
of Kerry and Bush and Star Wars.

Ate in a great cafe where you can get green borscht
for 35 cents a bowl. Our meals cost $5 total on the
average, maybe 8 if we splurged.

Tuesday we slept late in the hotel our driver (a
young Ukrainian entrepreneur friend of our Lakeville
friend Jake) had found for us. We had tried to get
Valentina to make a reservation for us at the
Victoria Hotel without success. When we got there
Monday morning after a memorable overnight train
ride from Simferopol we'll tell you about at length
sometime, the Victoria was filled up. So Oleg drove
us to a second nearby place where the desk clerk
couldn't even be bothered to come out but spoke to
him from back in her room around the corner (where
she was probably too lazy to get up, it being
6:30am). She said we could look at a room upstairs.
A look was all it took. Peeling wallpaper, two
narrow beds. We took off in a hurry. Next place
turned out to be just fine, a two room suite with
two TVs and balcony, good hot water and even toilet
paper, which in public places is nonexistent.

So then Oleg and his English-speaking wife Natalya
drove us to the airport, stopping first at a
gigantic superstore, Walmart-sized, two years old,
where we saw more stuff than we'd seen in a week. It
was astonishing to compare the 21st century inside
the store with the 19th we'd left in the Sevastopol
market, though to be fair there was plenty of
wonderful produce in both places. But this was like
being in a major American supermarket, except
everything at a fraction of the price. We bought big
chocolate bars for 40 cents. Great cheese at two
dollars or less a pound. AA batteries for 20
cents.Etc.

No toilet paper in the airport johns.

Flew Hungarian airline Malev to Budapest, short taxi
ride to our hotel we had found on the web. $92 a
night for aforementioned accommodations, including
great buffet breakfast.

Spent three hours Wednesday in the gigantic indoor
market, then walked across the Danube to the
renowned Hotel Gellert, a big Victorian spa, where
we tried to get an appointment for a Thai massage
but there wasn't enough time. Ate strudel at a
nearby cafe instead. Walked home so as not to feel
too guilty.

Thursday was the synagogue as I said before, as well
as a long visit to the free National Historical
Museum, very beautiful and interesting, and other
walking around, and then last night went to a folk
dance concert which we were able to videotape a good
deal of, since nobody seemed to mind and other
people took pictures too. National folk ensemble,
gorgeous costumes, singing, dancing, live music.

Left very early this morning, the hotel kindly
packing up bkfst for us since it was too early to
buffet.

So here we are in Bologna. I'm typing this at the
free Internet computers at the city information
bureau right on the Piazza Maggiore, where we will
probably go see Master and Commander tonight at 10
outside as a prelude to the festival, which starts
tomorrow. I have 10 shows, and you can see all the
info online at www.cinetecadibologna.it

I'm going to buy some olive oil and tomatoes and lettuce
and cheese and peppers at the big nearby market, and
dine in our room minus the strudel :-(

We feel extraordinarily lucky to have the freedom
and finances to do all that we are doing on this
trip. The Ukrainians we met (though the gangsters
building starter mansions in Odessa are certainly
the exception) cannot make ends meet on one job,
they really have to hustle just to survive, let
alone do anything like go to a movie or take a trip
somewhere, and evidently US tourist visas are
extremely difficult to get. We would like to help
the people we met there in any way we can. When you see these faces and hear
their voices, you'll know what we mean.

Sunday night

2004-05-23T23:03:00.000-04:00

Talkin' to myself, talkin to myself
Up too late and there's mold on the shelf
Give it up now and hit the hay
Tomorrow's gonna be a brand new day.

Friday fun

2004-05-21T15:06:00.000-04:00

Well, it is a sunny Friday, and I am trying to get some work done on the 10-minutes short film I'm making with Ben Hillman. Why is it taking so long? Mammoth snafus with sound files and synchronization, and I am making very slow progress. The problem is that I have deadlines on other film work and things are getting out of hand. Is it just me, or are others experiencing a Saturnian slowdown these days? I'd love to hear about it and how you're dealing with it.

Work hard!

D

Hey! It's a blog!

2004-05-18T14:33:00.000-04:00

Well, here we go. My first blog. Actually, the first one should have been the alog, and tomorrow's the blog, then clog and dlog and so forth. But Genesis in Hebrew begins with the letter B, so there's ample precedent.

All I want to say today is that anyone who reads this is going to see some strange stuff here in days and weeks to come. I write about music, silent film, consciousness, Italian food, married life, fatherhood, and more.

Stay tuned. Drop a line.

Donnie