Accompanying Gloria Swanson in 'Zaza' (1923)—Kino Lorber's Blu-ray reissue gets good marks

Gloria in a rare introspective moment from 'Zaza.'

Wednesday, June 6 marks the official release of Kino-Lorber's Blu-ray reissue of 'Zaza' (1923). It's a Gloria Swanson vehicle that's been unavailable for home viewing until now.

I recorded a piano score for 'Zaza' earlier this year, and it's gratifying to see comments now coming in as the release gets reviewed.

From Mike Gebert of the Nitrateville vintage film discussion group:

"Jeff Rapsis contributed the piano score, based on the original cue sheets, and it's pretty much ideal, moving adroitly between comedy and tasteful Continental melodrama."

And this is from a review on the www.silentera.com Web site:

"The film is accompanied by an entertaining piano music score by Jeff Rapsis."

From Brian Orndorf of www.blu-ray.com.

The 2.0 DTS-HD MA sound mix contains a score composed and performed by Jeff Rapsis, and he brings a hearty piano mood to the feature, doing a considerable job supporting onscreen activities. It's a simple track, but clear and commanding, with ideal balance and presence, without any dips in quality.

This is from Matthew Hartman of High-Def Digest:

"With a DTS-HD MA 2.0 piano score from composer Jeff Rapsis that follows the original 1923 cue sheet, this is a pretty fantastic score for the film. The piano work gives the film a nice old-time feel with the right blend of jaunty entertainment and hitting the lower dramatic tones. It never feels overly dramatic or too wild and fits the tone of the film perfectly."

And here's one from www.moviessilently.com:

This release features an enthusiastic piano score by Jeff Rapsis, which was adapted from an original 1923 cue sheet. The score makes liberal use of the 18th century French ballad Plaisir d’amour, which the film states is the favorite song of H.B. Warner’s character. Modern viewers will likely be more familiar with Elvis Presley’s Can’t Help Falling in Love, which uses the same melody. Just be assured that everything is quite correct and the movie has not developed Elvis fever.

Let me know if you see any others!

On that last one: I'd forgotten about how similar 'Plaisir d'amour' is to the tune of 'Can't Help Falling In Love,' so I'm glad that got mentioned. I'm not a stickler for period authenticity, but I wouldn't use a signature Elvis tune for a Gloria Swanson film set in post-World War I France!

I'm collecting these here not to toot my own horn (well, maybe a little) but to thank the writers for commenting on the music. Getting feedback of any kind is useful, and it's always great to see the music considered as part of a silent film's total package.

I also want to thank Rob Stone at the Library of Congress and Bret Wood at Kino Lorber for giving me this opportunity.

The Library of Congress has a 35mm print of 'Zaza,' and Rob invited me to accompany a screening of it at the Packard Campus Theatre in 2016.

This led to Rob introducing me to Bret at Kino, who asked me to put together a piano score based on the original cue sheet, which was obtained from the George Eastman archive.

And I would be remiss without mentioning all the efforts of Bill Millios, a filmmaker here in my New Hampshire home base who has been supportive of so many film/music projects.

In this case, Bill graciously gave up a few Saturday mornings to act as engineer in recording the score, which was performed on a Yamaha grand piano in the recital hall of the Manchester Community Music School way back in January. (Brrr!)

And on that note, I need to thank Judy Teehan and Valerie Gentilhomme at the music school for their assistance as well. Thank you, ladies!

Until now, I've focused on live performance as a way to improve my accompaniment technique and develop a working musical vocabulary, if vocabulary is the right word for vocabulary. (What a paradox!)

But I was excited at the chance to lay down a track for such a high profile flick (Gloria Swanson!), and I feel ready to do more.

So we'll see. Part of my capacity to do more depends on my ability to create and edit professional quality sound files, which is sorely lacking.

Changing that was one of my New Year's resolutions, and I'm afraid not much has been done in that direction. But there's always 2018!

Before we get there, however, some good screenings await, including a Buster Keaton program on Thursday, June 1 at the Flying Monkey Moviehouse in Plymouth N.H.

The film is 'Seven Chances' (1925), and the start time is 6:30 p.m. Hope to see you there!

Buster and a bevy of would-be brides in 'Seven Chances' (1925). None of them appear to be Gloria Swanson.

Notes from an April hiatus, and things to come: specifically, a lot more actual composing

In action: Wilton (N.H.) Town Hall Theatre back in 2010.

It's suddenly May, and I find I've accompanied only two silent film programs in the past three weeks.

At a pace of 100 shows a year, that doesn't happen too often. But it's given me the chance to reflect on my musical journey so far.

Hence this rather long "about me" post, which is my way of sorting things out. Here goes!

Going forward, I plan on devoting more energy to composing—you know, actually writing music down for others to play, rather than focusing on improv-based silent film accompaniment.

It's time, and I think I'm ready.

So in 2018, I'll throttle back on the number of silent film shows, and instead devote time to putting notes on paper, to conjure a quaint image from the pre-digital era.

Why this shift?

Well, it's been just about 10 years since I began creating live music for silent film screenings. But the desire to compose goes back a lot further.

As a young child, I was drawn to music, and responded to it strongly—especially the Warner Bros. cartoon scores of Carl Stalling. (A major influence to this day.)

Once I started piano lessons, my teenage years were full of intense musical discoveries, mostly about what people call "classical" music.

I was fascinated with the orchestra and all the music that had been created for it.

I devoured scores and paid hefty overdue fines on stacks of LPs I was always bringing home from the public library.

And increasingly, I felt the desire to create my own music: to forge a harmonic language, to carve melodic lines from the silence, to engineer entire new worlds of sound, and to express all that I felt so strongly.

In a word: music! It was everything. I recall getting truly upset with our high school band director because he wouldn't properly recognize March 25, 1981 as the 100th birthday of Bela Bartok.

But when it came time to pick a college, I decided against music. This happened for many reasons, including a presumed lack of talent on my part.

Also, it was a time when university composition departments were dominated by faculty who preached atonalism, serialism, and other "isms" that I somehow knew weren't for me.

Plus I had just encountered the work of author Kurt Vonnegut, a writer who threw my young mind for a loop.

So I decided it was words for me. I read books, majored in English, went into the newspaper business, and learned about writing.

But the music kept coming. Through all these years, I would sit in a meeting, and ideas would come. I'd actually draw out stave lines and jot them down.

Why? I don't know. It was a compulsion. But I thought for me, the musical train had left the station long ago.

Much later, after a couple of decades of misadventures in the newspaper business (where'd the time go?), I wound up writing about music for the arts journal I co-founded.

I found this satisfying, as I was able to draw from a base of knowledge that had never left me. Although I have to say, it did have a kind of "looking through the window glass" quality to it. As a music journalist, I felt my status as an outsider was cemented.

About then, conductor Ken Kiesler, music director of the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra, suggested I'd be a better music writer if I made music myself.

Good advice! So I started playing keyboard (and tuba, my other instrument) in pit bands for community theater shows, which seemed a suitable outlet.

At the same time, I began singing in the chorus of a local group, Granite State Opera. I'll always be grateful to Phil Lauriat, artistic director of the troupe, for letting me cavort on stage—and in the process, get better acquainted with some of the great opera scores.

Then I got a chance to work with Bill Millios, a New Hampshire-based filmmaker, who let me compose cues for a dramatic feature film, 'Dangerous Crosswinds,' which came out in 2005.

At that point, I still believed I'd missed out on the lifelong journey that most composers take for their work to be—well, worth doing.

Bill helped me realize I could really still do it, if I wanted to. I could create original music, just as I yearned to do as a teenager.

After 'Dangerous Crosswinds' wrapped, I hoped to do more. But in rural New England, directors of feature-length films weren't exactly throwing themselves at me.

By then I'd met someone else who helped me on my way: Dave Stevenson, a local archivist and film collector. Knowing Dave led to my first chance to do live silent film accompaniment: at the first-ever Mirthquake festival in Manchester, N.H. in 2007.

I found it came naturally to me. Looking back, I think the key was that the music was not the focus, but was in support of something else. And that somehow freed my sub-conscious, or disarmed my internal critic, and allowed the music to come naturally.

For me, creating music for vintage film turned out to be like working with chocolate and peanut butter: two things I loved were even better together!

And this led to more silent film gigs—tentatively at first, but building over the years to the point where my calendar is pretty much jammed.

Which brings us to now. And why? Why do all this?

Well—first, because I enjoy it. I joke that it's "my public therapy," and that's actually not far from the truth.

For me, silent film accompaniment became the long-sought-after outlet for all the things I felt so strongly, going back to adolescence. Creating music this way became a kind of ongoing catharsis for me, drawing steadily on the bottled-up sonic aquifer that I carried with me all along.

After awhile, I found myself going to major venues like the Somerville Theatre down in Boston, and making music that I found extremely satisfying personally, and which people seemed to enjoy. Until I began accompanying silent film, I never imagined this could happen, especially in a big city with a vibrant cultural scene. As I said, I believed that train had left the station long ago.

Also: being mostly a self-taught "trial and error" kind of person, I found that the only way I could develop my ability to accompany a film was to do it a lot. That accounts for the heavy schedule of performances I've set up for myself.

And in doing so—in making so much music live and in public—I couldn't help but begin developing my own idiosyncratic musical voice and vocabulary.

I'd find something I liked, and then keep doing it. I'd stumble through something that flopped, and would tend to avoid it.

Little by little, and often subconsciously, I was slowly forging elements of the language I'd dreamed about as a teenager.

Harmonies and melodies with certain characteristics, certain moves and gestures—all were coming increasingly into focus as I improvised my way through evenings of vintage film.

It took a while before I realized this was happening. I first recall being aware of it when, after a screening, a guy came up to me and asked why I'd played the same music that he'd heard before, at an earlier screening.

This surprised me because I hadn't. It was all new material. But then I realized: it sounded similar because of elements of an evolving style.

Increasingly confident that I've developed something of a musical language, in the past couple of years I've become more interested in actually writing things down, as opposed to doing improv. In other words, composing.

This led to an amazing opportunity that I still can't quite explain.

Awhile back, I got a chance climb Mount Kilimanjaro, which I did in January, 2015. And this led to a chance to compose and orchestral score about the experience for the New Hampshire Philharmonic and the group's music director, Mark Latham.

(Mark is from a family of British medical officers with a long history in colonial East Africa, and was himself born in what is now Tanzania, home to Kilimanjaro.)

Mark waited patiently as the Kilimanjaro piece grew from a one-movement "postcard from Africa" into an ambitious four-movement symphonic canvas complete with integrated harmonic material that cycled throughout the score.

Rather than just paint a picture, it explored the question of what meaning a white American could really get from a brief visit to such a place as Kilimanjaro.

The piece was performed earlier this year, at a concert on Jan. 22. And bringing the work together and having it performed was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

It was also an exhilarating confirmation to me that music-making on this scale, and in this way, may not yet be closed off for me. As a composer, I feel I'm about where I wanted to be when I was 18 years old!

Since then, other chances to compose have come my way. And I've been keeping a growing list of my own ideas I hope to work on in the future, too.

Right now, I'm working on a score that involves barbershop quartet music. And there's another piece about dumps, inspired by a gentleman I know who rescues century-old 78 shellac records from a town transfer station.

I want to write an elegy for dead shopping malls. I want to write a suite of music about the islands of New York City, similar to the "Three Places in New England" by Charles Ives.

And all of it, I think, is leading up to some kind of dramatic opera on the Pamela Smart trial, a notorious murder-for-hire case that happened here in New Hampshire in the early 1990s (and which I covered as a reporter).

If there was ever a story that deserved an operatic setting, that's it!

So, speaking of journalism: I'm pleased to report that all the silent film accompaniment work in the past decade has given me something of a musical language, but also the ability and confidence to compose.

And that's what I intend to do.

I'll continue to accompany silent film programs, of course—I really enjoy doing it, but also regular performance provides a fertile environment for developing new material.

However, I'll need to trim back my schedule from the current pace, if only to get the time needed to do more composing.

It's been a remarkable journey so far. All along, I've been helped by many generous people. And I'm blessed with the same excitement that I felt as a teenager, I think.

All in all, not a bad place to be!

Accompanying a program at the Manchester (N.H.) City Library in 2015.

Two recording projects in the works: 'Homecoming' (1928) for ReelClassicsDVD, and 'Zaza' (1923) for Kino-Lorber

Original promotional art for Gloria Swanson in 'Zaza' (1923).

Excited about something unusual for me: not one but two separate silent film score recording projects coming up.

Tomorrow (Saturday, Jan. 14), I'll record music for a re-release of 'Homecoming' (1928), a German drama about World War II that will soon be re-issued on DVD by ReelClassicdvd.com.

And then next Saturday (Jan. 21), I'll lay down tracks for 'Zaza' (1923), the Gloria Swanson film being re-issued this spring in Blu-Ray by Kino-Lorber.

In both cases, I'll be recording the music in the recital hall of the Manchester Community Music School in Manchester, N.H. Many thanks to Judy Teehan, Valerie Gentilehomme, and the entire staff of the music school for making the space (and the nice grand piano!) available.

Also, I need to thank N.H. filmmaker Bill Millios in advance for helping me engineer the recording. I'm in the process of putting together my own set-up to record and edit music files, but I'm not quite there yet, and Bill is willing to help bridge the gap.

All this is unusual for me because until now, I've generally resisted having my film score work recorded.

Why? I don't know if this is something people can understand, but let me try to explain anyway.

I've found when I create live music in the moment, largely through improvising while a film is playing, it takes about 10 minutes or so to get into what I call the "silent film accompaniment zone."

What I mean by that is that it takes about 10 minutes for me to settle into the mental place where the music seems to flow naturally and freely from wherever it comes from.

This is the time needed for all the self-editing and self-consciousness and critical judgmental functions to fade away, at least for me. After that, the music seems to come easily.

In other words, I get to a place where my critical faculties are minimized and I stop second-guessing myself. And that's when the magic starts.

However, I've found that when I'm aware that I'm being recorded—when I'm aware that every note will be preserved for posterity—it's been difficult for my critical self to fade away.

Really. The presence of a live microphone really makes my self-conscious. And it never seems to subside, and so it's much tougher to reach that "silent film accompaniment zone" where everything comes so easily.

If one thing goes wrong, I overreact. I overthink. I question myself all the more. And so on.

So rather than record anything, I've gotten along for quite awhile now thinking of myself as a "live performance" artist only: one whose work exists only in the moment, in one place, and in one way before a certain audience. To get it, you had to be there.

So what's with this sudden spurt of recording projects?

Well, a couple of things. For one, I think I've been doing silent film accompaniment long enough to have a good sense of my own style and how to use it effectively. At the risk of sounding too full of myself, I have something to contribute, however minor.

But also, I'm at a point where I sense it would be good to stretch myself—to push into areas that I've shied away from, if only for the satisfaction of making an attempt.

Writing down music (as in my Kilimanjaro Suite) is one way.

And recording it is another.

I was having these thoughts last fall when Mark Roth from ReelClassics contacted me about doing music for 'Homecoming' (1928) and a companion short, 'France and the Great War.'

So it seemed like fate or chance or whatever was in agreement that I should try to get more comfortable with recording.

After agreeing to score 'Homecoming,' I was contacted by Bret Wood at Kino-Lorber at doing music for 'Zaza' (1923), which I had accompanied earlier in 2016 at the Packard Theatre at the Library of Congress campus in Culpeper, Va.

'Zaza' was pretty big news because it's a Gloria Swanson picture that's never been reissued in modern times. So I need to thank Rob Stone at the Packard Center for bringing me in to accompany the film last year, and then for recommending me to Bret.

But Bret upped the ante by asking that I create a score using as much as possible music from an original cue sheet for the film that he'd found at the George Eastman House.

As an accompanist who specializes in creating my own music to score silent pictures, I've found that having to pieces from other people, no matter how good, is another barrier to me being able to reach that "silent film accompaniment" zone.

Even if I memorize music so that I could play it while reciting the alphabet backwards, the scoring of a film just doesn't happen naturally for me when it's someone else's stuff.

But Kino-Lorber had a vision for this, and had already paid for the cue sheet. So I gave it a look and found that every single melody in it (just the opening phrase, and no supporting chords) was something I'd never heard of in my life!

Ouch! Undaunted, I contacted the one person in the silent film world I thought would know where I could find at least a few of these pieces: Rodney Sauer, the founder and pianist of the famed Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, based in Boulder, Colo.

And I'll be darned if Rodney didn't reply almost instantly with word that he had sheet music for about a dozen of the cues, accompanied by his own cheeky observation that some of them "are actually good music."

So Rodney sent what he had to me—a mix of obscure tunes, sentimental ballads, and "photoplay music" written specifically for silent film musicians to use. And for the past week, I've been reading through it and trying to "make it my own" as much as possible in advance of the recording session a week from tomorrow.

Well, wish me luck on these two recording projects. I would like to do more, but that will only happen if I can get through these without completely screwing them up.

And the trick to doing that, I think, is to somehow forget that I'm being recorded at all, and hope that the music flows naturally.

Can I do it? We'll find out soon enough!

Turning Mount Kilimanjaro into music—with help from the N.H. Philharmonic

Our team greets the sunrise on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro on January 10, 2015. I'm kneeling in front, mostly due to exhaustion.

Heading into a quiet stretch for silent film accompaniment: no shows until a four-day stretch in late June that includes a return gig at the wonderful Revue Cinema in Toronto, Canada.

But I'm thankful for the break because it'll give me a chance to make progress on another musical project I'm pursuing: an orchestral piece about Mount Kilimanjaro.

I got a chance to climb Mount Kilimanjaro last year as part of a group of 12 people. Our nine-day trek, climaxed by an overnight slog to reach the summit at sunrise, was an awesome experience.

It was also an unexpectedly musical experience. Singing of all types takes place on the slopes of Africa's highest mountain: folk songs, spirituals, hymns, and so much more.

And I found the snow-capped mountain makes its own kind of music, too.

So now I find myself pulling together an orchestral score that captures something, I hope, of the Kilimanjaro experience.

Our team and some of our guides on the way up. Still a ways to go!

And just as Kilimanjaro looms over the countryside, a read-through of my score-in-progress looms over my own day-to-day activities. Sometime this fall, members of the New Hampshire Philharmonic expect to play through it in preparation for a performance during their 2016-17 season.

I'm very excited by this opportunity, and grateful to music director Mark Latham and the orchestra for their willingness to encourage new music.

How did this happen? It's one of those "it was meant to be" series of events, I guess.

Prior to departing for Africa, I was contacted by the Philharmonic to be involved with a program of film music they were planning.

Alas, I couldn't join in because the concert date was when I would be on Kilimanjaro. (Now there's an excuse you don't get to use very often.)

After leaving Barranco Camp, our team negotiates the "Breakfast Wall" on Day 6.

Well, it turned out that music director Latham has extensive family ties to the legendary mountain, which is Africa's highest and also the tallest free-standing mountain in the world.

Mark comes from a family of medical officers who were among the first British officials to settle in Tanzania after Germany ceded control of its African territories following World War I.

So Mark's immediate ancestors were among the first English settlers to explore the slopes and summit of Kilimanjaro. Mark's grandfather was actually the first Englishmen to summit the mountain, back in 1926. (Germans had been on the peak before that, but prior to European settlement, there's no record of anyone venturing to the top.)

Today, several features on the mountain carry the name of Latham family members. For example: a spot we passed on the summit rim, Stella Point, is named in honor of Mark's great aunt, the first woman to reach the summit.

And Mark's grandfather was the guy who came across (and photographed) the leopard carcass high on the peak, which inspired Ernest Hemingway's 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro.'

I learned all this because prior to our trip, Mark graciously sat down and showed some of us his Kilimanjaro photo album and other priceless heirlooms from the family's days in what was then British East Africa.

He also shared his own experiences of climbing the mountain with his father back in 1976, on the 50th anniversary of his grandfather's first ascent.

We were stunned and grateful to get this insider's perspective on Kilimanjaro prior to departing. (Mark was actually born in Tanzania.) Imagine climbing a world-famous peak with a number of features named after family members of someone you had dinner with!

There's even a book about the family's experiences. It's called Kilimanjaro Tales: The Saga of a Medical Family in Africa.

After we scaled the peak in January of last year, Mark and I talked about the mountain, and he was willing to take a chance on Kilimanjaro made into music.

So I've been sketching out some notions in the hopes of capturing some of the experience in score.

As I understand it, the Phil (as it's called by its close friends) plans to include it in a concert that features visual elements: in this case, images of Kilimanjaro projected on a screen while the music gets played.

Me, I'm thrilled at the opportunity to work on music that's getting written down.

Most of my silent film work is improv-based, which is the best way for me to work in that field. For quite some time now, I've been developing my own musical idiom, such as it is.

But I'm at a point where I have a sense of what kind of music I want to write down, and to try to get performed.

Our guide Elly Anase, who got us all to the summit safely, with the help of a lot of Diamox.

So I've been refining some ideas and also recently updated my Finale scoring software. Last time I used it was in creating the score for 'Dangerous Crosswinds' (2005), a feature-length drama directed by New Hampshire filmmaker Bill Millios.

And in another coincidence, back then the film's cues were played by members of...The New Hampshire Philharmonic. So we go way back, this orchestra and me. :)

So I have a stretch of time coming up to push ahead with the Kilimanjaro score. And I think going public with it will help me stay focused and ensure that I'm motivated to get it done, rather than keep thinking I'll get to it when I have that most elusive object, "more time."

For me, getting anything done is very similar to how we got to the top of Kilimanjaro: one step at a time.

More updates to come.

Looking back at Charlie and Buster, looking forward to 'Peter Pan' in Connecticut

A handmade sign promoting the evening's entertainment at the Tuscan Opera House in Dixfield, Maine.

Two unusual one-off screenings this past weekend as things wind down to the holiday season lull.

Last Friday night (Dec. 6), I had the pleasure of accompanying a screening of Chaplin's 'The Kid' (1921) for the Media and Design Club of Southern New Hampshire University. It was a pleasure despite lugging my gear in a light snow and the late hour: a 9:30 p.m. start!

But it was the club's sole activity this semester, and I was delighted that they'd decided a silent film with live music was the way to go. The venue: a small lecture hall with rows of bench desks, but it worked well enough.

Thanks to Bill Millios (on the SNHU faculty) for recommending me to the club, and organizer Jennifer Lampro for all her efforts. Lots of good questions afterwards, and also fun with a couple of students fascinated by my aging digital synthesizer. ("Wow, this is damaged and beat up like a road guitar.")

But real adventure was Saturday, where I put in 370 miles up and back to Dixfield, Maine, where high school students staged a silent film show at the town's opera house to benefit the town's historical society.

This part of Maine is unfamiliar to me, so I left home around noon to allow for plenty of time for some Christmas shopping on the way in Littleton, N.H. I then got on Route 2, the great east-west highway of northern New England, and even though I made good time (no lumbering lumber trucks), I just barely made it to Dixfield for the appointed 5:30 p.m. arrival.

One reason was Rumford, Maine, the town just before Dixfield. Route 2 runs right through the middle of this compact community, which is dominated by a truly enormous paper mill. The sun had gone down, and somehow I'd lost the scent of Route 2 through town, instead getting trapped in a small area of narrow one-way streets in Rumford's vintage downtown.

I finally found Route 2 after driving right through a portion of the paper mill, among piles of logs several stories high that awaited their fate. I later discovered that the Rumford Mill is the nation's largest producer of "coated paper" used in magazine publishing. So next time you pick up your copy of "Field & Stream," I may have already seen it in raw form.

The auditorium of the Tuscan Opera House, seen from the front. About a third of the floor space (at right) is taken up by a kitchen that was installed when the place functioned as a restaurant.

Dixfield's "Tuscan Opera House" turned out to be a sprawling multi-floor wood frame relic from another era. Built by the International Order of Odd Fellows in 1905 (on the foundations of a former opera house that burned to the ground), the structure hosted dances, movies, and school graduation ceremonies for generations of town residents.

In more recent years, the place has functioned as an antique shop and a restaurant, with long stretches of inactivity. Changes to the building have resulted in a really unusual layout for the auditorium, which now has about a third of its floor space taken up by a walled-off kitchen. But the stage is intact, and so it's still a good (if slightly lop-sided) place for a show.

A view of the proscenium in the opera house, with handmade movie screen front and center, restaurant kitchen to the left.

These days, building owner Nancy Carpenter is looking for ways to reconnect the Opera House to town life. So when Kurt Rowley, a teacher at the local high school, suggested that his students organize a silent film program to benefit the town's historical society, she was glad to say yes.

So I got the call a few months ago. And the next thing I knew, it was Saturday, Dec. 7, and I was face to face with a large wooden Indian of the "cigar store" type, guarding the main door of the opera house. Inside, the place is an evocative mixture of vintage bric-a-brac, including a massive mechanical cash register that students were using to ring up ticket and concession sales. (That's them "raiding the till" in the photo below.)

Although I had to concentrate on setting up my gear and preparing for the performance, I loved the quirky surroundings and wished I could have spent more time just poking around. (Mrs. Carpenter offered to give me a tour afterwards, but the three-hour drive home beckoned and I had to hit the road.)

One problem with movies at the Tuscan Opera House: it lacks any kind of screen. So, for our program, Mr. Rowley commissioned a homespun version made out of what seemed to be wide strips of cotton crafting fabric sewn together horizontally. It worked brilliantly!

The film program was preceded by music from this excellent student violinist, who made use of an incredible improvised music stand, and whose name I have misplaced. Someone help me!

The program was Buster Keaton's two "junior" films: first 'Sherlock Jr.' (1924) to warm things up, and then 'Steamboat Bill Jr.' (1928) as the main attraction. We got about 60 people and reaction was what I would call "steady." People really seemed to enjoy both films, but this just wasn't a crowd given to explosive laughter. Maybe interior Maine is just like that, I guess. Ayup. People had some very nice things to say afterwards, however, and I felt I'd hit the mark mostly.

So: a small town I'd never been to, a quirky old auditorium with good acoustics, friendly and polite high school students eager to volunteer, a live audience, and Buster Keaton. What more could a silent film accompanist want?

And that leaves just one more gig before I shut things down for the holiday season: a screening of 'Peter Pan' (1924) at the library down in Stratford, Conn. (A three-hour drive in the other direction.) The fun starts on Sunday, Dec. 15 at 2 p.m. at Stratford Library, 2203 Main St., Stratford, Conn. The screening is free and open to all! That's Betty Bronson, below, in the title role.

I'm looking forward to this, in part because I've done music for 'Peter Pan' twice in the past month, and so I feel like I'm in good shape to help the film come to life. The movie is "in my head," and I have the right musical ideas to go with it, I think. The most problematic part of the exercise will be just getting down there and setting up my gear (disc player, projector, synthesizer, speakers) prior to the show, which always has me worried until everything is hooked up and working.

So I guess that's what a silent film accompanist could want: a tech assistant!

Notes on scoring 'The Bells' (1926) for reissue by Reel Classic DVD

I recently got to do music for a new release of 'The Bells' (1926), an obscure melodrama with a cast featuring Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff, of all people. (There they are together in a frame capture!) The film, a feature from Chadwick Pictures (Slogan: Each Production an Accomplishment), was transferred from a 16mm print and just reissued by Mark Roth under his "Reelclassicdvd.com" label.

By the way, Mark's extensive catalog of public domain releases is worth browsing at www.reelclassicdvd.com, with a lot of interesting titles you won't find elsewhere. I have film scholar/archivist Bruce Lawton to thank for recommending me to Mark, who was great to work with. It was a fun project, and now that it's out, here are a few notes on the process of developing a score for 'The Bells.'

First, the obvious: Yes, I used bells in it. :)

About the film, which is set in 19th century Europe: Barrymore is great as a debt-laden small town businessman tempted to commit murder. But I was especially intrigued by Karloff as "the Mesmerizer," a creepy carnival hypnotist who gets drawn into the case. His role resonated with me because hypnosis (of a sort) plays an important role in silent film music, I think—at least the way I do it. So 'The Bells' was an especially appropriate picture for me to tackle.

The thing is, I have a very hard time with recording music. I'm much more of a "do it live" kind of guy. One barrier is practical: I just don't have a set-up that allows me to record anything conveniently or easily, and so must to rely on the indulgence of friends and acquaintances to lay down any tracks.

Also, I just don't do well when I know I'm being recorded. It leads to self-consciousness that's very difficult for me to overcome, and that makes it tough to do music that I think "sticks to the screen."

It's not like I'm nervous in front of people: I have no problem performing live for audiences, the bigger the better. Rather, the act of recording, or the knowledge that I'm being recorded, somehow short-circuits the process by which I get into a trance-like state that's conducive to effective scoring, at least with me.

I find that in doing music for films, I do my best work while "in the moment" improvising during a live performance. If all goes well, I get so absorbed by translating the film's action into music that my usual self-consciousness fades away, and the process of creating music flows naturally and without hesitation.

When I'm doing it, it almost seems like I stop thinking. Perhaps that's because there's just no time for thinking. Whatever the cause, when I'm "in the zone," it all becomes second nature, and that's when I find that the good stuff happens. Of course there is a lot of thinking going on, but it's all happening under the spell of the creative, artistic part of my mind that's in the driver's seat.

This state cannot be switched on and off. Rather, it is achieved by immersion, meaning that it takes awhile for me to settle down and reach it. It's kind of like a self-imposed trance. Hence my interest in the Karloff character in 'The Bells.'

On the other hand, when I'm recording something, I can't help but think of all the equipment around me and how something could go wrong, or I'm worried I'll mess up, or I'm wondering about synchronization, or just concerned about a dozen different things that might happen. It's times like this when I'd like to have someone like Karloff's "Mesmerizer" on hand to just put me under. After all, hypnosis was how a young Rachmaninoff got over the debacle of his first symphony. I'm no Rachmaninoff (my hair is too long), but if it worked for him...

Well, anyway, I keep saying yes to recording projects, in part because I hope I'll get accustomed to the process if I do it more, and also because I feel I should be able to handle it. Plus, it never hurts to have your name on a few commercial discs.

So when Mark first approached me back in January with 'The Bells,' I didn't hesitate. At the time, I prepping for a busy calendar of shows in February and March, so it would have to wait a bit. Then, at the end of March, my mother injured herself in a fall and that sort of took over things for awhile.

The next thing I knew, it was July, and Bruce Lawton was in town as guest projectionist for the 2012 Sons of the Desert international convention, held this year in Manchester, N.H. Bruce mentioned that Mark was still waiting but about ready to give up on me, which prompted me to make arrangements to finally get this done.

Without access to a recording studio, the best way I have to record anything in a useable format is to enlist the services of Bill Millios, a local independent filmmaker (Back Lot Films is his company) with whom I've worked in the past. Bill has a digital motion picture camera that allows for direct input of sound, which makes things easy: just hook it up to my Korg synthesizer and we're ready to go. (To record a sound file, the camera must be running, so somewhere there's a visual record of me playing the keyboard, which was yet another distraction.)

Bill is a busy guy, and so am I, so it worked out that we had only a single afternoon in August to get this done for Mark. Our date—Tuesday, Aug. 14—turned out to be hot and sticky, which was too bad for us, for we were recording in my non-air-conditioned home office. Because I need to hear myself, we couldn't run any fans, either, so it was pretty much sweat city right from the beginning.

I had watched 'The Bells' a couple of times—once back in January when I first got the work disc from Mark, and then again more recently to remind myself how it went. In terms of themes, I hadn't prepared anything elaborate, but the old "Dies Irae" melody from the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead seemed to keep coming to me while watching it, so I would go with that.

As for texture, Mark had suggested some special underscoring involving bells, obviously a key element. I could do this easily enough on the synthesizer, but only for a few important sequences. For the balance of the film, I needed a sound that would contrast with the bells but also be versatile enough to evoke moods ranging from heavy drama to light comedy. I chose 'Romantic Piano,' which is mostly a resonant piano keyboard sound, but with strings underneath it that come out behind any sustained notes.

Then, the day before the recording session, I went through 'The Bells' on fast forward, just to note when I'd switch settings. I'd start with the bells over the main titles, but then go with piano until much later, when strange things start happening and Lionel Barrymore begins hearing the eponymous bells. I counted about a half-dozen spots where bells would be appropriate, each of them in a fairly obvious place, so I didn't feel the need to write anything down.

And that was it. Bill came over on Tuesday afternoon and we set things up. I popped the work disc in my small office player, and Bill turned his camera on, and off we went. Mark's work disc included a "countdown" to a tone signal, which he would use to synchronize the sound file to the video. Once that happened, there was no turning back. I knew that the only way I could get it done and not get bogged down with endless retakes and overthinking was just to do it in one gulp, just like a live performance, and hope for the best.

I have to admit, at first I was not very satisfied with what I was doing. My timing was off, the score wasn't setting right, and the music for another film seemed to be coming out of me. Plus, with our improvised recording set-up, it was hard for me to hear myself, even without a fan running. A couple of times I was close to stopping for a "Take 2," but I pressed on, with both Bill and I literally sweating it out while Lionel Barrymore did battle with his wife and creditors.

The usual process eventually kicked in, and after about 20 minutes I thought I was keeping up with 'The Bells' (1926) pretty well. A little motif of running eighth notes that I used right at the start proved versatile enough to show up again and again, signaling everything from foreboding to (in a major key) rural tranquility. And the Dies Irae fit nicely under a lot of other music as an internal harmony or a bass line.

And so it went, the intensity ramping up when Barrymore faces temptation that could change his life. I don't want to spoil it, so I'll leave it at that. The climax is a surreal dream sequence that sports a daring visual style, especially for a poverty row silent feature.

I've been doing this enough so that I think I have pretty reliable instincts about when to hold back, when to push, and when to pull out all the stops. 'The Bells' followed a pretty standard arc, and by the final scenes, I thought I had something that held together.

And so I finished with a dramatic flourish, playing a little long (after 'The End') to allow for a music credit, and then came the final chord. I then recorded another track for a companion short, 'Having Their Picture Took,' and that was that.

That night, Bill posted the .wav files on his Web site for downloading, which Mark did. And lo and behold, several weeks later, the films were in his online catalog and a copy of the DVD was in my mailbox.

I tend to avoid listening to recordings of music I do for the same reason I avoid making them. It's just not the same as doing it live. The permanence of it disturbs me—every time I hear something that sounds off, I regret the inability to do anything about it. But of course I was curious how 'The Bells' turned out, and the analytical side of my brain does realize that I can really learn a lot from hearing myself.

So in went the disc, and I was surprised when out came a score that worked pretty well, I thought. I did that? Even at the beginning, it held together and followed the exposition without being cloying. Nice! And it really did seem to get better as the film progressed. What was funny, too, was that even though I had recorded it only a few weeks earlier, I sometimes would have absolutely no recollection of playing the music that I was now hearing. Sometimes, knowing my instincts, I could anticipate what would come next. But I was often wrong!

It wasn't all peaches and cream, however. Throughout the film, I could clearly hear one bad habit that I need to work on. When in the middle of an idea that I'm working out in real time, I have a tendency to think ahead to where the phrase or melody will go next, which is all part of the process. However, that causes my fingers to rush what I'm playing, as if I've figured it out and so let's get this over with, shall we? This was really noticeable, and I need to work on it.

Also, I need to reacquaint myself with simple power of a single note, which can do so much to bring a scene to life. The music doesn't always have to be dense and moving, which seems to be my default mode. So many scenes would work effectively with spare accompaniment; as a bonus, it provides a nice contrast to when things really do get busy.

Finally, repeated notes. I use a lot of them, and some in 'The Bells' were rhythmically quite sloppy. So back to basics on that. I'll use Mr. Bean's synthesizer performance at the 2012 London Olympics as motivation.

But overall, the score for 'The Bells' turned out a lot better than I was prepared to expect. So thanks to Mark Roth for giving me the chance to work on something that not only turned out well, but helped me learn about stuff that will benefit what I do, I hope. I'd love to get your thoughts, so please hop on over to www.reelclassicdvd.com and order your copy today!

Accompanying a "slow motion" picture

Last weekend I had the privilege of accompanying an unusual ancestor to motion pictures. It was a moving picture, yes, but one that was created back in 1851, or about a half-century before movies as we know them came about. And rather than the usual rate of 24 frames per second, this one was shown at a rate that was closer to 24 frames per hour. Call it a "slow motion" picture.

This amazing artifact, presented after years of restoration, was the "Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress," an 800-foot-long painting that depicted scenes from John Bunyan's classic book. With images eight feet high and designed by noted artist Frederic Edwin Church and others, the massive stage-filling panorama was designed to be scrolled from left to right as a narrator described the story.

So it was a movie from the time before movies. And yes, there was music, although no one seems to know exactly what might have been played for a panorama presentation 150 years ago. So we settled for an improvised accompaniment done in the style of American composers of the period, with an emphasis on Louis Moreau Gottschalk.

And so the 'Pilgrim's Progress' moving panorama, restored over the past few years by the Saco (Maine) Museum, received its world re-premiere (and its first known presentation in at least 140 years) on Saturday, June 23 at Saco Town Hall.

About 100 people were on hand for the show, which included a narrator in period costume and yours truly doing the music live.

So much about this presentation amazed me, it's hard to know where to begin. How about the panoramas image's, which are vivid and colorful illustrations that look like something you'd see on a church ceiling? How about the way the story leapt to life when you put all the pieces in place -- the images, the narration, the audience, and the music? (It's very much like silent film in that sense.)

How about the incredible home-built mechanism used to present the panorama, which resembled a giant two-story film camera made of plywood? And how about the improbable survival of this particular panorama, which lay forgotten in storage for more than a century prior to rediscovery? (Most original panoramas are long gone.)

The reason I was on hand was that the Saco Museum had commissioned a video presentation of the panorama as part of its exhibition, and filmmaker Bill Millios asked me to provide music for that. No problem! Bill did a great job, and the result is online at the museum's Web site.

And I thought that was that. But then museum director Jessica Skwire Routhier asked if I could do the music live for the panorama's "re-premiere" at Saco Town Hall. Up until then, I didn't realize they were actually going to attempt to show the thing to an audience. But of course -- just a film does not exist when sitting in a can, a panorama does not truly come to life unless it is actually presented.

One obstacle was that they couldn't show the now-delicate 19th century original. But as part of the restoration, the museum had every bit of the panorama photographed at high resolution. These images were then brilliantly transferred to a new roll of fabric and -- hey presto! -- a working "print" of the panorama was ready for the rigors of showtime.

But how to show it? Panoramas were in vogue for only a short time prior to the Civil War, and remarkably little info exists about the mechanics of presenting them. Entrepreneurs would commission a panorama on some popular or significant story, then haul it around the countryside, staging shows at town halls or churches. But how?

Well, without anything to go on, a volunteer crew led by an energetic gentleman named Peter Morelli instead used a heavy dose of Yankee ingenuity to construct a remarkable wood-framed (and very low tech) contraption that presented the panorama in the same way a traditional camera moves film. With its heavy wooden timber framing, it wouldn't have looked out of place in some of Bunyan's medieval visions.

The panorama would be rolled up onto a giant reel, which would then be hung vertically. The fabric would then be threaded through the viewing panel, which kept it stretched taut so it looked good while on display. It would then be fed onto a take-up reel on the other end. At showtime, the panorama could be moved one scene at a time as the story progressed!

It was an ingenious home-brewed solution, but not without limitations. For one thing, it was big and heavy, and could not easily be moved, leaving me to still wonder how the original panorama presenters did it. (One theory I heard was that the original panoramas hung by rings from a rail, which I think of as the 'shower curtain' theory.) Also, the rolled panorama was too big to fit on the take-up reels, and so had to be presented in two parts, which necessitated an intermission.

And also, like anything new and untried, the "panorama presentation engine" in practice was prone to glitches and jamming, so much so that tinkering went on right up until curtain time. Thankfully, the show went off without a hitch, though I was prepared to improvise for as long it took to get the thing literally back on track.

About 100 people turned out for the first showing, and I immediately felt that "live performance" vibe you get when something special is happening and it's not in a home entertainment center. We were all collaborating on something special, to bring to life something that hadn't been truly seen as intended for more than a century.

And it worked! Narrator Dean Smalley, dressed in period costume and elegant top hat, did a great job. The panorama rolled from scene to scene without a glitch. And I developed a way of sneaking in music underneath Dean's narration so that when it came time for the scene to change (a process that might take 15 seconds), I could grow it into a musical transition that seemed to fit naturally.

I built extensively on some "walking music" I had created (in the style of Gottschalk) for the video, and also through in a lot of passages from some of the composer's salon works. The virtuoso pieces such as "Bamboula" are beyond me, and need a real grand piano anyway to sound right, I think.

The only big adjustment we had to make was that I had to really back off during the narration so as not to cover it. But still, there was an excitement and energy in the air that you get when everything comes together, and it certainly did for the first showing of "Moving Panorama of Pilgrim's Progress" in more than a century.

What was interesting to me, as an outsider showing up at the last minute, was the sense of pre-show jitters that was palpable on the part of everyone involved, some of whom had been working on this for months and even years. It was the equal of any pre-opening night Broadway nerves, as there was truly no way to know if it would work until you actually did it.

Museum director Jessica Skwire Routhier (left) chats with a panorama aficionado following last Saturday's live presentation.

I was so pleased that all their efforts were rewarded with an immensely successful show! You could see how something like a panorama would have been an extremely popular way to tell a story with pictures and music, especially at a time when not everyone was literate.

At our performance, the audience was so intrigued that virtually everyone went backstage to view the mechanism for showing it. Peter Morelli was like a proud papa, explaining to everyone how things worked backstage.

And yes, things went so well that two additional showings of the moving panorama have been scheduled: on Friday, Aug. 3 and again on Friday, Aug. 31, both at 6:30 p.m. at the handsome Saco Town Hall, which looks like this:

If you're interested in vintage cinema or popular culture (or even just history in general), I urge you to attend one of these rare live performances of this vanished form of popular art.

And the restored original panorama itself, all 800 feet of it, is currently on display for public viewing through Nov. 10. A portion is at the Saco Museum, but the majority of it is hung at the sprawling Pepperell Mill Campus in Saco, which has enough wall space for this massive artifact. For more information, visit the museum online at www.dyerlibrarysacomuseum.org.

I haven't seen the real thing yet, but I'm looking forward to it, especially after last week's live performance. Like all good museum exhibits, it makes one think. In this day of viewing movies on cell phones, could massive moving panoramas come back into vogue? Wouldn't it be great to commission panoramas on more contemporary themes, such as Watergate, the Gulf War, or Bernie Madoff? (Or, more seriously, 9/11?)

As someone who works a lot with silent film, I often see how what's old can seem completely new. Stranger things have happened.