Preparing for the last Cinefest in Syracuse, N.Y. and other thoughts about creativity

A lifetime of inspiration from a single box of crayons. See below.

This week I'm driving out to Syracuse, N.Y. for the last-ever Cinefest, a four-day gathering of vintage film buffs and collectors.

A fair amount of silent film is run at this event, for which three pianists are usually brought in to provide accompaniment.

I've had the privilege of being in the mix for the past three years, during which I've played alongside phenomenal musicians such as Phil Carli, Jon Mirsalis, and many others. It's been quite an education for me.

Now, for the final year, they're bringing in no less than eight accompanists as a kind of last hurrah.

The roster includes Phil and Jon, but also Ben Model, Andrew Simpson, Makia Matsumura, Judy Rosenberg, Gabriel Thibaudeau—and me.

We'll get together on Wednesday night and decide who plays what. Simple math says each of us will play no more than two features at most, rather than the usual five or six.

I'm really looking forward it, and not because of the lighter workload. For me, it's a great chance to hear how other accompanists bring films to life. I always come away inspired and eager to push myself in new directions. (Instead of just the refrigerator.)

Why is this the last Cinefest? After 35 years, organizers felt it was time to pack up shop in the face of looming changes in the vintage film field: an aging fan base, the shift to digital, the easy availability of once-rare titles.

I'm heading to Syracuse in a pretty good state of mind, I think.

This past Sunday, on the way to accompany a screening of 'Grandma's Boy' (1922) at the public library in Townsend, Mass., I got to reflecting on how music still can really move me.

As someone caring for an elderly parent in poor health, I can't help but sometimes wonder what the aging process will be like for me.

I wonder if and when music will someday cease to inspire or excite me, or prompt me to feel anything.

Will it fade? Will it falter? Will it happen gradually? Or will the music just one day stop?

Well, the good news is that in recent days I've experienced several waves of affirmation that have me believing that music will continue to be an important part of my life no matter what.

On the way to Townsend, Mass., I was planning to listen to a CD with a series of lectures on the historical origins of Christianity, believe it or not. Hey, I try to keep up.

But when leaving the house, I couldn't find the CD. So instead, I just grabbed another disc at random. It turned out to be a recording of music by John Adams—not the president, but the California-based composer who grew up right here in New Hampshire. (That's him below, on the left.)

By a total coincidence, the disc had a performance of Adams' 'Chamber Symphony' from 1993. It's a work that I'll hear played live next month by the San Francisco Symphony when I go out there to do a program at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum on Saturday, April 11.

But here it was now, in my car. And I found myself carried away by the energetic lines and the propulsive rhythms. I find the music of Adams tremendously exciting, not just because of the music itself, but because of the possibilities it represents.

Think of it! After more than a half-century of dead-end atonalism, Adams (and other composers) developed a tonal language all his own that was unlike past music, and in fact sounded like it belonged to my age. And his music, in all its variety, shows how much untapped potential exists with the materials of music.

And it made me think of crayons, of all things. When I was young, the classic box of 64 Crayola crayons was the gold standard for creativity.

I remember starting with the basic eight, and then graduating to 16—a set that included combos such as "red orange" and "blue green."

But it was the big box of 64, with all the basics but also exotic shades such as Periwinkle and Burnt Sienna, that really fired my imagination. To me, the box of 64 represented unending possibilities. It was the symphony orchestra of crayons!

I eventually grafted some of the excitement about 64 crayons to the 12 notes of music. And I think I've maintained that sense of excitement, even now, far into adulthood. To me, the notes also represent endless possibilities.

And as I let the music of John Adams' 'Grand Pianola Music' (next on the disc) wash over me, I felt confident that music must remain a lifelong passion. There's still a lot of life left in that box of crayons, for me and anyone else who wants to use them.

After that, I turned on the radio, and heard different music. I recognized it immediately: the end of the first movement of the great Symphony No. 3 (the "organ" symphony) by Camille Saint-Saëns. (That's him at right.)

This was music I discovered while in junior high school, by means of a library LP of Eugene Ormandy leading the Philadelphia Orchestra. I found it thrilling and exhilarating stuff—so much so that I wore out the library's recording.

And now here I was, nearly four decades later, and the music was having the same effect on me. The tunes, the harmonies, the rhythmic energy—and all of it suffused with a sense of fresh and unending possibilities.

So I head to Syracuse, and my own musical future, feeling confident that music will continue to offer as much to me as it always has. Familiar music will continue to move me, and new discoveries will continue to inspire me.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think I'm ready to put away the crayons anytime soon.

Some notes from Cinefest 2014; and next up, 'The Lost World' (1925)

'Saturday Night' (1922), shown on Thursday morning, was the opening silent at this year's Cinefest.

I've just come back from Cinefest in Syracuse. And although I didn't fly, boy are my arms tired!

Well, not really, even though I accompanied six feature films in four days. I just couldn't resist the chance to give new life to humor from another era.

And that captures the spirit of Cinefest, I think: giving life (on screen, anyway) to older motion pictures that otherwise aren't screened anywhere. By "older," I mean features and short films from the silent and early talkie era, up until about World War II.

Some are surprisingly compelling. Others turn out to be real turkeys. But all get a chance to live again, shown as they were intended: on a big screen, with an attentive audience, and with live music for the silent films.

The more I think about it, the more important I realize such events are in terms of understanding the impact that early motion pictures had on the culture of their era. Much of their energy and excitement comes from the effect they produced on an audience, and the people who created them had this in mind all along.

They were never intended to be consumed in private or in solitude, either on a screen in someone's basement or, God help us, on a cell phone.

So the chance to see older pictures, good or bad, with an audience, can be a revelation in that a key element of their original power is restored. To see any motion picture from before World War II without an audience is like standing outside the Louvre Museum in Paris and saying you've experienced the Mona Lisa.

This year's Cinefest, which ran from Thursday, March 13 through Sunday, March 16, 2014, offered a wonderfully mixed grabbag of titles, including a group of a half-dozen Fox talkies from the early 1930s and a bigger-than-normal proportion of silent films.

In fact, the silent schedule was heavy enough for this year's Cinefest to have four accompanists on hand to supply music, rather than the usual three. And that was good news for me, because one of the big attractions of Cinefest is the chance to hear other accompanists ply the trade in live performance for a lot of different films.

This year, my colleagues were Makia Matusmura, a highly regarded New York-based accompanist whom I'd never had the chance to hear before; Judy Rosenberg, a wonderful accompanist from San Francisco whose recorded work I've long admired but whom I also hadn't heard in live performance; and the great Jon Mirsalis, also from the San Francisco area, whose style and approach I think makes him one of the most effective accompanists in the field.

All three turned in multiple memorable performances—in fact, there was so much music and so many movies, at this point I would be hard-pressed single out one moment over another. There was also a richness to the accompaniment in that everyone was able to adapt quite readily to all the different styles and genres of the many silents on the program.

Even accompanist Ben Model was on hand for his "undercranking" presentation, and sat in to play for many of the comedy short subject programs, so I got to hear him in action as well. Five accompanists in one spot must be some kind of record.

I always learn so much, I think, from hearing what other accompanists do and now they approach the task. It's one of the great pleasures of being part of Cinefest these past three years.

As for me, I had some good moments, but also some weak stretches. Compiling a log of what I did might help me tie together what I got out of the experience, so here goes. (Keep in mind that there's no chance to preview these films, so they're played "cold" by the accompanists.)

• Thursday, March 13: 'Saturday Night' (1922): The very first silent feature of this year's Cinefest was this Cecil B. DeMille society comedy/drama that went pretty well. I had good material to accompany the constrasting worlds of the upper and lower class characters, and the story flowed quite naturally, so the music stayed on target, I thought. The best thing about it was that you could see the comedy scenes coming from a mile away, so I was able to get music under them that was pretty effective, I thought. It wasn't hard to capture even small details, such as how the elevated train ran right outside a tenement flat.

• Thursday, March 13: 'Fanchon, the Cricket' (1915): This recently restored early Mary Pickford feature was another effort that held together well, I thought. Unusual in that it was set in a kind of medieval fantasy world, which I tried to match with a light "music box" style of accompaniment that seemed to do the trick.Kind of a weak film in that I found it hard to find much to be sympathetic about in Mary's character or situation, but I did my best to "cast a spell" and help put the film over.

Fannie Ward and Jack Dean in 'For the Defense' (1916)

• Friday, March 14: 'For the Defense' (1916): This early Paramount drama was perhaps my favorite of those I accompanied, in that it was totally unknown to me, but somehow I felt in synch with it right from the start. The material I chose seemed to fit well, I could follow the story with ease, and I paced it right so that the last 20 minutes of the film seemed to be very effective. No less a person than film preservation guru David Shepard said I did a good job "heightening the dramatic tension" of the film's climax. High praise indeed! It also won the award for the best intertitle of the festival: "I have to tell you ..... I murdered a man.... and I love you."

• Friday, March 14: 'Buck Privates' (1928): No, not the Abbott and Costello film, but a silent World War I army comedy about doughboys in Europe. I tried to keep it light, which was the right approach, but somehow the material I had didn't seem to help the film jell. (The fact that the film started just before midnight might have been a factor.) However, a frantic chase finale came as a nice surprise, allowing me to kick the material I'd been using into high velocity mode. Too bad so few attendees were on hand for it! But this served as a great example to me of how comedy is harder to do effectively. A chance to see this beforehand would have really helped with the pacing, as the humor was not as easily discerned on sight as in, say, 'Saturday Night.'

• Saturday, March 15: 'The Live Wire' (1925): This Johnny Hines comedy should have been a highlight of the festival, but it produced only sparse reaction, I think in part because the material I chose just wasn't a great fit for the film, and also I couldn't seem to get in synch with the film's spirit. Because of this, I began pushing tempos too soon, further confusing things and leaving me with nowhere to go when the climax finally did play out. Leonard Maltin, sitting right behind me for the screening, commented afterwards that I had "set quite a pace for myself" on that one. Definitely my weakest entry, I felt, and not helped by two cups of wine I had earlier in the evening. :)

• Sunday, March 16: 'The Devil Horse' (1926): I considered this action-packed Western drama starring Rex the Wonder Horse my grand finale, and so got permission to hook up the digital synthesizer and speakers to go all out. Everyone seemed really impressed, if only because the palette of the full orchestra (including big percussion, appropriate for a horse opera full of scenes of "injuns" on the warpath) was undoubtedly a constrast to the piano texture that is otherwise the soundtrack for silents at Cinefest. However, like 'The Live Wire,' I felt out of synch with this one as well, and found myself playing too much too soon. All went okay, however, despite a blown projection bulb during the climactic battle to save the fort. I pushed forward in the darkness, playing underscoring that vamped us until the movie started up again—now tinted pink because the new bulb hadn't warmed up yet!

What did I learn? Take your time. Resist the temptation to overplay. And don't drink wine prior to accompanying. A continuous line of melody can be better than abrupt transitions. Matching the right material is important, so don't be afraid to abandon music that's not working and go with something else. Avoid AUI, or Accompanying Under the Influence. 

Cinefest follows a pattern of inviting accompanists for a three-year commitment on a rotating basis. And because this was my third year, 'The Devil Horse' really was the grand finale of my involvement for now, at least as an accompanist. It's been a great experience, as I've learned a lot and made contacts that will help me continue to pursue this unusual craft.

So I want to thank everyone associated with this grand affair for the chance to contribute music and get to know some wonderful people. Thanks especially to Joe Yranski for first inviting me as an accompanist, and to organizers Rick Scheckman and Gerry Orlando for all they do it getting the films programmed and the festival planned, and also to the projection and house crew in the theater who make it easy to concentrate on the music alone—something that's quite a luxury for me. :)

And now...looking ahead! A screening of 'The Lost World' (1925) will take place on Thursday, March 20 at 6:30 p.m. at the Flying Monkey Moviehouse and Performance Center in Plymouth, N.H. Tickets are $10 and hoping for a good crowd to be on hand for this grandpappy of all dinosaur movies.

I've been so busy that I haven't had a chance to get out a press release on this one, which is a shame, because I think it has a natural audience, given the enduring popularity of our prehistoric friends. Still, hope to see you there!

From the piano: 33rd Annual Cinefest vintage film confab March 14-17, 2013

My usual state between films at Cinefest.

What happens when several hundred movie buffs get together to enjoy four straight days of obscure vintage cinema?

By "straight," I mean from 9 a.m. to midnight Thursday through Saturday, followed by a lighter schedule of just 9 hours of viewing on Sunday. And by "vintage," I mean little-known flicks from way back in the silent and early sound era.

What happens is you get Cinefest, one of the high points of the vintage entertainment calendar. Every March, the film faithful gather at a Holiday Inn outside Syracuse, N.Y. for a multi-day buffet of comedies, dramas, westerns, thrillers, propaganda films, musicals, home movies of Curly Howard, and more. They're often bizarre, but they're always interesting.

To learn more about this annual confab, check out a write-up by critic and author Leonard Maltin, who attends every year with his wife Alice.

Hey! That's me with Leonard Maltin and Alice.

But for a more limited view—my perspective from the piano bench as one of the accompanists, or just wandering the halls—read on.

It might seem a little disjointed, but that's what happens when you score five completely different films (and plenty of shorts) in a few days. Reality begins blurring with what occurred on screen. Also, the place where the music comes from is tapped so often and steadily that it becomes hard to turn off, or starts to behave like a leaky faucet. You begin imagining music while, say, walking across the parking lot to the pharmacy to buy beer or headache tablets.

• Thursday, March 14: Day One of Cinefest was proceeded by the previous night's customary trip to the hospitality suite, where I scarfed a couple of sandwiches and helped carry in Leonard Maltin's luggage across the hall. Ah, show business.

Also in the musical line-up: Andrew Simpson, who was here last year, and Jon Mirsalis, one of the big names in the field and someone whose work I really admire. What a privilege to be playing on the same program with two heavy hitters!

And also a little intimidating. But I've found that my own style is what it is. So I can't get too self-conscious or try to be something I'm not — specifically, a concert pianist. Heck, I'd even make a lousy rehearsal pianist! Helpfully, Jon recounted how he felt he was terrible when he started out, which I actually found comforting.

On Thursday morning, accompaniment duties began at 10:45 a.m. with the first installment of 'Lame Brains and Lunatics,' a program of obscure silent short comedies from the Library of Congress compiled by Rob Stone and Steve Massa. Andrew took the lead on this; I followed along with tunes for a couple of shorts in between. Jon had asked to be excused from playing for silent film comedies, which seem to be pretty low on his list of good ways to spend what time we have on this planet, and I can understand.

After lunch, I got to hear Jon play (for me, the first time live) for 'Wild Beauty' (1926), an absurd horse drama that Jon's music transformed into compelling cinema. In live performance, Jon's style and musical vocabulary are instantly recognizable. I kept thinking: present at the creation. It's why people visit Niagara Falls in person rather just look at pictures of it. I was especially impressed with some deep and consistent rumbling that Jon produced for a stampede sequence — it all seemed to be coming from the bottom octave of the keyboard. Later, Jon said the effect was produced by "a lot of notes."

Andrew drew a difficult drama, 'The Whip,' (1917), another horse-related story (more about the humans) but a hodgepodge of scenes that didn't quite make sense and in some cases were clearly in the wrong order. He made it bearable with some great playing, I thought. Things fell together for him much more naturally in 'My Boy' (1921), a melodrama featuring child star Jackie Coogan, then fresh off his triumph in Chaplin's 'The Kid' the year before.

Andrew, with his quadro-textured Italian suitcoat, warms up for 'My Boy' on Thursday afternoon. Note the four buttons in different colors on his coat sleeve.

As cute as Coogan is as a child actor, my problem is that I can't help thinking of him as Uncle Fester in old 'The Addams Family' TV show. (As seen on right.) But Andrew's music helped sweep all that away, creating a score that wrung maximum emotional value from the film.

When the lights came up at the end, I was surprised to see Andrew in tears! How great to witness such genuine emotion, for a silent film or for anything, really. He mentioned that thoughts of his own two-year-old son prompted the response, and the film really got to him. Wow! In the presence of some powerful stuff there.

And me? I'd just spent the whole day listening to two masterful accompanists, with occasional breaks to wonder what I was doing on the same program.

But there I was. And my first at-bat came Thursday night after dinner, with music for a program of seldom-screened Mary Pickford pics: the short 'So Near and Yet So Far' (1912) and the early feature 'The Foundling' (1916), an unusual film because it was made twice — the original footage burned in a fire before the picture was released, so they went back and shot it all over again!

Alas, I was really all over the place for the short. Neither film nor accompanist seemed to settle down. But I had some "A List" ideas ready for 'The Foundling,' and once it started, I was relieved when things came together pretty quickly. The film was easy to follow, so I never lost the story thread, which makes a big difference. Things kept clicking, with one nice moment after another. As we approached the two-thirds mark, I got the feeling I was nailing it, and so headed into the last part playing with confidence.

And yes, at the big climax, I uncorked the full treatment of my main theme, cycling the first two bars of it (C Major and E minor) until Mary revealed her true identity to her father, which was my cue to push the melody forward to what Rachmaninoff would identify as the "purple moment," that one high point that everything else is leading to, in one way or another. It was one of those moments that worked out in a way that would have been impossible to plan for in advance, and I thought it was a fitting way to handle what was clearly the big emotional moment.

As the film ended, I rolled into a closing cadence and finished with a flourish. Lights up, generous applause, and the great relief that in my initial outing, I'd hit a home run. So many nice comments afterwards, especially from the Pickford people, who hadn't realized I was improvising the score and had never seen the picture before. And I was especially pleased when Jon Miralis said he thought the music was "haunting." Wow!

Afterwards, a kindly older gentleman complimented me on the way I had used a theme from a Schubert string quartet. This was surprising because I hadn't used one—well, at least not that I was aware of. But it's entirely possible that some fragment of melody I heard long ago lodged somewhere in my head and was only jarred loose by Mary Pickford's curls. You never know. Hey, with only 12 notes to work with, things are bound to sound similar once in awhile.

Andrew and Jon during the first day.

• Friday, March 15: Long day for me, making up for the drought on Thursday: two features plus another round of short comedies from the Library of Congress under the 'Lame Brains and Lunatics' banner. I lucked out on the first feature, 'Ladies of Leisure' (1926), a generally light comedy with a few serious scenes salted in, but ultimately played for laughs. The material I picked for this seemed to fit well, and also got to do some faux-minimalist stuff during the dramatic scenes, which were pretty predictable. When the distraught woman hails a streetcar that says "To Brooklyn Bridge," you know what's going to happen. So the score held together, but just barely. By the ending, I was ready for lunch.

For that, we hauled down the road to Heidi's of Liverpool, an iconic hot dog stand, where I accidentally stuck my foot in wet cement in fine silent comedy style. After that adventure, I was next up for 'Bolshevism on Trial' (1919), a strange propaganda film for which I had high hopes. But entering the darkened room about 15 minutes before showtime, I was thrown when I found the audience watching a silent film being projected with no music! What?! Was I supposed to be up there? What was happening?

I made my way up to the front, thinking I'd somehow disappointed everyone by not being on hand, and was just about to sit down at the keyboard when the film clip ended, and then started again, this time with recorded sound. I immediately realized that the previous clip was unrestored film that lacked the synchronized discs, and was just being shown to give audiences an idea of what the materials looked like before they were put back together.

Still, it was enough to rattle me so that I had trouble finding my groove for the propaganda film. It ought to have been easy to play for, as the plot was transparent and the action entirely predictable. But the material I'd chosen to work with just wasn't a good match, and my efforts todo things like twist around phrases of the Star-Spangled Banner didn't generate much energy, either. I was glad when it ended, and felt it had been my low point so far. (Three features down, two to go.)

The highlight of Friday, I thought, was Jon Mirsalis playing for 'The Ice Flood' (1926), a Universal drama centered on exactly that: a big ice jam in logging country in the Pacific Northwest. Not any kind of classic, but the kind of picture you can imagine people getting really excited about when this was first released. It's in the same category of the fire film that Kevin Brownlow uses to start off his great "Pioneers" documentary of silent film.

Film archivist Bruce Lawton and me in the sprawling dealers' room.

After dinner, another session of 'Lame Brains and Lunatics' short comedies, and I wasn't happy with how this worked out, either. Andrew is a natural for this sort of thing, spinning out honky-tonk accompaniment without apparent effort, and I gain a lot from hearing what he does. I think I just need to sit and do one or two of these a day just to get into the habit of responding to them. Maybe it's just nerves—the unfamiliar room and the big and knowledgeable audience made it that much harder to forget myself and get inside these films.

Friday night gabfast in the Holiday Inn lobby. In plaid is Rob Stone from the Library of Congress; at his left is silent comedy guru Steve Massa, about to be author of 'Lame Brains and Lunatics,' a newly published book on the field.

• Saturday, March 16: An early day. Hearty breakfast at Carl's Kountry Kitchen on Teall Avenue, then fellow accompanist Andrew Simpson and I arrived at the Palace Theater on James Street at 8 a.m. for a day of 35mm prints. Me, I was in what I can now identify as my 'mid-Cinefest funk' — that place where you feel you've done your best work and it's going to be tough to try to summon up the energy (and the ideas) to equal or surpass the mark.

As organizer Joe Yranski jokes, a theater sporting the name 'Palace' is often anything but. And yes, the Palace on James Street is far from grand. It's a modest one-screen affair in a funky neighborhood that somehow endured into the age of the multiplex, and only this past May ceased running first-run films when the economics finally gave out.

But I like the place, which wears the understated quirkiness of another era. Inside, there's just enough architectural schmaltz to make it endearing without being ridiculous. And the 38th anniversary wishes to Leonard and Alice Maltin on the marquee was a nice touch.

However, since they pulled the plug on first-run shows, the projection booth discipline has apparently deteriorated somewhat. We had films out of order and appear when they weren't supposed to, including one I was supposed to play, 'Come On Over,' a 1922 Colleen Moore vehicle about a gal from the Emerald Isle. 'Come On Over' started in the middle of a collection of technicolor fragments that Jon Mirsalis was playing. When it came on, Jon sat and waited, but when it was apparent the Moore film wasn't going to stop, he invited me to jump in, which I did.

Not the best set-up for effective film scoring, but I had some material in mind and was surprised when I picked up the film no problem and things began to jell. (I later joked that I'm one-quarter Irish, and the score reflected about that ratio.) I kept it light, as the film itself was light as a feather, driven by misunderstandings and with no real villain. Plot threads were tied up without much drama, and then it was time to party.

Joe Yranski had tipped me off in advance that 'Come On Over' contained an Irish jig near the end. Sure enough, when the old guy with the bagpipes was brought in, I was ready with open fifths droning in the bass and 6/8 figures whirling above, with a sharped fourth to add a little sparkle to the racket.

What surprised me, however, was the jig was not just a scene, but turned out to be the actual ending of the film. I didn't expect this, but as it unfolded and kept going, it became increasingly clear that we were done with the story and now it was time for everyone to dance. And one by one, they each got a turn—young folks, old folks, everyone. It was structured like a Bollywood movie!

This realization dawned on me at about the time the Colleen Moore character brought out a door to dance on as her final statement of jig superiority. This is the film's real climax! I had been holding back, but at that point I sensed it was time to amp things up, so began building to a climax, with the right hand working its way up the keyboard.

And sure enough, just as I got the place where there ain't no place else to go, the frantic jig scene faded out to 'The End.' So I poured on what little I had left, keeping the energy going for a few more bars to finish out with a clanging 6/8 flourish, tone clusters and all, including that sharped fourth. And as I realized I'd nailed it, I was overcome with a happiness and satisfaction that's hard to describe. But I can say that it ranks as one of the most satisfying moments I've had in accompanying silent films.

I even ended with a showy downward glissando!

And before I move on, let me tip my non-existent cap to Andrew Simpson, who opened the morning with a completely polished and totally compelling score for 'Three Women' (1924), a sophisticated Ernst Lubitsch drama. I thought this was Andrew's very best stuff of the event, a flawless match of music and movie.

After 'Come On Over,' we then played round robin for the Library of Congress 'Mostly Lost' presentation, with me drawing a Hank Mann comedy and a fragment of a Western that I thought was a comedy for the first few minutes until I realized it was being played straight. Luckily, I had chosen a strategy of "straight music" instead of comic in the hopes that it would bring out the comedy, so I wasn't in too bad a place when the comedy never came.

I went back to the hotel for the afternoon, and so missed one of the great moments of Cinefest 2013. Jon Mirsalis was accompanying the Norma Talmadge drama 'The Woman Disputed' (1928), and during a climactic battle scene, somehow the lamp fell off the keyboard. Not only that — it crashed onto the microphone that had been set up behind the keyboard, causing the bulb to break with a resounding smash that was broadcast to the entire theater.

Amazingly, all this happened in exact synchronization with a huge on-screen explosion, making it one of the most well-timed technical disasters in the history of live film scores. When we reconvened at the hotel on Saturday night, I had the honor of saying a few words to the crowd, and presented Jon a new bulb to make up for the one lost during his performance.

Accompanist Jon Mirsalis holds up his replacement light bulb.

Back at the hotel that night, my last feature was 'Partners Again' (1926), a "middle class Jewish" comedy that I don't think I had the right material for. But I kept things light and staccato throughout, which helped, and then did my best to lend some high velocity thrills to an airborne climax that seemed to last about five minutes longer than really necessary. Later, I was amazed to learn that I was playing for the first public screening of this film since its original release in 1926!

Still, I sensed I wasn't quite pulling off the approach I had chosen, so not the most satisfying experience of the event. As Groucho Marx said, "Sorry folks, they can't all be gems."

But afterwards, I was surprised when no less a film authority than Scott Margolin, who leads the Vitaphone Project, came over and congratulated me on what he said was a superb performance! I was grateful for his remarks, which were a reminder that people hear and respond to a score in many different ways.

Jon then sat down for a bravura score to 'Behind the Door' (1919), an intense 'atrocity' film from the Ince studios. Highlighted by incredible photography (especially at sea) and appallingly gruesome subject matter, Jon's music to this was the highlight of the festival for me.

Andrew finished the night with 'The Quarterback' (1926), a college football comedy starring Richard Dix and Esther Ralston. Andrew had started the day at 8:30 a.m. at the Palace, and here he was playing the last flick of the day, starting after 11 p.m. At some point this ceases to be fun, and as the opening titles rolled for 'The Quarterback,' I got the sense that we'd reached that spot. Still, Andrew turned in an energetic "rah rah" football score, which really impressed me with its effectiveness as well as its musicianship.

Your three accompanists: Jon, Andrew, and someone who should know better than to wear that much black. (Festival organizer Gerry Orlando is in back.)

• Sunday, March 17: I had to get an early start back to home base in New Hampshire, so bid everyone goodbye without attending events of screenings. (Jon handled the one silent film that afternoon.) Surprisingly, I found myself reluctant to leave. Despite the ups and downs of wrestling with accompaniment, I had come to feel at home in this environment. What if this was really my job and I had to do this every day? If it was like the most recent Cinefest, I wouldn't mind at all!

But for now, I'll have to wait until March 13, 2014 to return for the final installment of my three-year engagement. Better start practicing.

Saturday, March 17: Cinefest, Day 3

The Palace Theatre in Syracuse, N.Y., gradually fills with Cinefest attendees.

Today brought the grand finalé: an off-site trip to the Palace Theatre for a day-long program of 35mm film. It was also my first chance for "quality time" with legendary accompanist Phil Carli, who'd been suffering a cold all weekend and spending a lot of time resting, but still tackling films with a "show must go on" attitude.

But first we had to get to the theater. Phil knew where it was, so I followed him in his big blue Olds Ninety-Eight as we hopped on Interstate 81, then through neighborhood streets until reaching the Palace.

Despite the name, the theater is no movie palace from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Rather, it's a very homey one-screen neighborhood film house with about 500 seats and a modest balcony. As a throwback to the days when movie theaters were part of any urban streetscape, I loved the place immediately. The projectionist late told me it's one of only three theaters in all of Syracuse that can still run 35mm film.

We came early (before Cinefest attendees began arriving by school bus) to check out the keyboard (a Yamaha clavinova) and sound arrangements. Inside, we found the house sound tech setting up a microphone to rest on the keyboard. Phil surprised me by aggressively ordering the tech to not mike the piano and not feed it through the house sound. "I don't want it to sound like it's a recorded score," Phil said loudly, and in a tone that indicated he wasn't fooling around.

Fellow accompanist Andrew Simpson had arrived by then, and we both stood by as Phil asked for adjustments, deferring to his "senior" status. Eventually, yes, the microphone was shut off and we just used the Yahama's built-in output. What Phil was after, of course, was what a genuine acoustic piano would sound like, with the music definitely coming from it rather than from speakers around the room.

This was at odds with my general desire to aim for sound that does approximate a movie score effect, meaning I generally like to hook up the synthesizer output to house sound whenever possible. But for the solo piano sound in a modest theater, Phil was right, I think: coming from the house sound system would have been too much, or at least a disorientating distraction.

A pre-show visit of critic/author Leonard Maltin at the keyboard prompted photos of the accompanists, including this one of all three. Phil, a big guy, joked that in any photo, he's always the one looming in from the side. This prompted Maltin to recall something that Milton Berle once told him: in any photo, make sure you're standing on the left. Why?

"Because that way, you'll always be the first name in the caption," Maltin said. Wow! I told him that in 25 years of the newspaper business, I'd never heard that little pearl of wisdom, as practical as it is true. I guess that's one reason to go to an event such as Cinefest. Here's Mr. Maltin with yours truly:

The day-long program opened with a series of comedy shorts, and once again I elected to go first, in part because later in the morning, I'd play the first feature, and also because my style is "thinner" than what both Andrew and Phil do with comedies, and I didn't want my work to seem like a let-down after their work.

Well, luck was with me, as 'No Children' (1929) was a wonderful film that got a big audience reaction. It took awhile for me to find the melody, but once that happened, I kept up with the film and things seemed to hold together. After that, I sat back in astonishment as Andrew and Phil tackled short comedies starring Hank Mann, Stan Laurel, and Ford Sterling, the latter of which made extensive use of an electric chair. I continue to be amazed at what these guys can do on the fly to bring these films to life: Andrew's jazzed-up treatment of "La Marseillaise" for Stan Laurel's attempts to sell a book on Napoleon, and Phil crashing all over the keyboard during the frantic Sterling film.

I later asked Phil about his approach, and he told me something very illuminating. When accompanying a film, he doesn't play the piano. Rather, he's imagining the varied timbres of the entire orchestra, conjuring them up through the keyboard. And hearing him play, that really was true: you could hear a shrill E flat clarinet line climbing out of the dense harmonies, followed sudden string tremolos, then the crash of percussion in abrupt bass discords. It made me think of how Liszt did the same thing in transcribing the Beethoven symphonies — evoking the whole orchestra through the keyboard. It's a level of musicianship that I don't think I could ever hope to reach, but knowing that will help me do more with my own attempts, I think.

Phil is the nicest person you could imagine, but he has very definite opinions about certain things, and does not hesitate to share them. Don't get him started on Charles Ives, for instance, whom Carli immediately branded a "complete charlatan" in conversation with Andrew. (Phil went on to say he despised the music of Copland, Bernstein, and basically all 20th century American composers, and that the best U.S. composer was George Whitefield Chadwick.) But somehow, I found this refreshing, harking back to a time when people could have opinions and completely disagree but still be agreeable, which Phil always was.

If 'No Children' went well, then the Clara Bow feature 'Get Your Man' (1927) was a romp. Started strong with a bluesy-Gershwiny thing I sometimes pull out, and all seemed to go smoothly after that, even with an in-progress restoration print that had something like 200 splices in it. Most interesting for me was a six-minute sequence of titles inserted in place of two missing reels — for some reason, I could do music for these that seemed to really click, and it all came across very effectively, I thought.

In doing music for 'Get Your Man,' two other old themes bubbled up: a "love" theme created for 'The Mask of Zorro' (1920) that was a nice contrast to the bouncy Gershwinish main theme, and also a minuet that was originally a tune I found myself singing to my dogs. Thankfully, none of the splices let go, and I felt the whole score really held together and supported the picture effectively. Afterwards, I received many kind comments from people, including noted film preservationist David Shepard, who was in attendance.

Alas, things went a little less smoothly for Andrew in 'Mr. Fix-It' (1918), a fun early comedy from Douglas Fairbanks. Andrew was doing a great job with the music, but the film broke during a reel change, causing the screen to go dark. Andrew was in the middle of a busy passage at the time, and he just kept playing, even when the house lights came up. With no sense of how long the interlude would be, Andrew kept up the energy, and then started notching it up little by little, until finally the audience began applauding. Andrew then switched to something lighter, but augmented it with some "shooting the keyboard" moves in fine Chico Marx style. It was a superb example of how to fill time!

Weird: At one point during 'Mr. Fix-It,' I felt a tingling on my wrist. "This film is really affecting me," I thought, briefly scratching the spot. But then it happened again, and again. Whatever. However, after the lights came up, I found I had been sitting where someone had spilled a soda, and little red ants were swarming at my feet! Yeesh! Ah, the glamorous life of silent film accompaniment.

And then it was lunchtime, so I wandered around the theater to take some pictures. Here's the projection booth, with the twin Century machines already loaded with the opening afternoon feature, 'Hail the Woman' (1920).

And here's a shot of the theater's vintage lobby:

I then go check on Phil, who had gone back to his car to get some rest. Finding him resting comfortably in the passenger seat with a blindfold on, I moseyed down the street to explore not one but two local bookstores, making this part of Syracuse a good candidate for the land that time forgot.

In one, I found a couple of older paperback Vonneguts that I scooped up for my collection, and had a long chat with Cinfest regular Rick Scheckman, who's on the staff of "Late Show With David Letterman" and a real knowledgeable film guy. In another, I found a pile of interesting railroad publications, including a copy of "36 Miles of Trouble," a book about the West River Railroad, a long-gone shortline that linked the Vermont communities of Brattleboro and Londonderry. I bought it for Phil, a railroad buff, thinking he might enjoy it.

I missed the afternoon's films as I had mid-term exams to read and wanted to get in my New York State run, too. (Ended up doing 8.3 miles.) After the others came back, I joined Phil and his family and Andrew and Rob Stone for dinner at The Mission, a terrific Tex-Mex restaurant housed in an ex-church in downtown Syracuse. Hey, what better way to spend St. Patrick's Day?

And that was it for film accompaniment, or so I thought. That evening, Andrew was to do the only silent: the recent color restoration of 'A Trip To The Moon' (1903), with David Shepard narrating. (I suggested using the synthesizer to add some weirdness to the moon scenes, but Andrew wisely demurred due to lack of rehearsal.) Below, here's a picture of Andrew prior to 'A Trip To The Moon' as he might have been rendered by one of the French Impressionists of the period.

But afterwards, a reel of recently recovered Clara Bow silent material was screening, and I wound up at the keyboard in what turned into a disjointed scramble to keep up with the rapidly shifting images. Well, you do the best you can and hope it helped people enjoy the clips.

And that was it. I fell asleep in my room after that, missing out on any Saturday night fun in the Hospitality Room on the 6th floor. Oh well! The next morning was higlighted by breakfast with Andrew and Rob at Carl's Kountry Kitchen, a place that looked like it hadn't been altered since Lyndon B. Johnson was in the White House.


I liked everything about it, especially this curious message:

Friday, March 16: Cinefest, Day 2

• Played for two features today. In the afternoon, I found 'Partners Three' (1918), a sorta-Western drama starring Enid Bennett, a tough film to do effective music for. One issue was the condition of the print: missing the main titles, and many of the intertitles were "flash" versions (single-frame placeholders) that either went by too quickly to read or were so degraded as to be illegible. Also, the story was hard for me to follow, which made for some tentative passages, and also led to moments where I'd commit to something only to find I was going in the wrong direction and have to switch course.

• Equally disjointed, it seemed to me, was the one surviving reel from 'Tillie's Tomato Surprise' (1915), a six-reel follow-up to the more well-known 'Tillie's Punctured Romance' (1914). I couldn't make any sense of this film as it unreeled - first there's a man in a kilt operating a meat grinder that produced live dogs, then a guy is flying through the air, and then who knows what? Not sure how much work should be done to uncover the rest of this film.

• An evening screening of 'The Dark Mirror' (1920), a surrealistic crime drama about a woman whose sense of reality becomes blurred by her dreams, was much more satisfying in terms of music. I had a few melodies ready for this and it all seemed to hold together. Good complete print, easy to watch and follow. Preceded by 'Food and Growth,' a strange silent educational film about rats.

• Fellow accompanists Phil Carli and Andrew Simpson tackled a bouquet of short slapstick comedies this afternoon, and I continue to be in awe of what they can do with this kind of film. Andrew comes up with bouncy stuff with spiky harmonies and has a gift for finding ways to punctuate big moments without breaking stride. And Phil is just phenomenal at underscoring comedy with music that just roars out of the keyboard at times. What a treat to be able to be in their presence, and an inspiration as well.

• I had a nice conversation in the hall today with David Shepard, the noted film restoration expert who once ran Blackhawk Films in Iowa. As a teenager in the late 1970s, this is the company that got all my pocket money in exchange for 8mm versions of classic silent films, which I'd run again and again. Ah, memories of a misspent youth. Well, not entirely misspent -- for example, I can give you a scene-by-scene description of 'Cops' (1922), 'One Week' (1920), and probably all the other Buster Keaton short comedies.

• I wouldn't take this as a comment on the vintage film community, but it's interesting that also booked into the conference center this weekend is the local "near-death experience" society.

• Personal notes: Ate breakfast this morning at the No Name Diner. It's called that because the restaurant wants to be known for its food, not its name. All patrons are entered into a raffle for $25; I'll make an announcement if I'm this week's lucky winner. Came back to hotel to get some work done, but realized I needed more sleep and so missed Phil's morning performance. Had dinner at Heid's, a roadside hot dog restaurant: a "sea dog" washed down with ginger beer.

Thursday, March 15: Cinefest, Day 1

Okay, the first full day of this year's Cinefest is done, so here's a brief write-up of the highlights as I experienced them. (Actually, it's not quite over yet -- they're still running an Adolphe Menjou film downstairs, but it's over for me.)

• What a thrill to hear my two fellow accompanists come up with music for obscure films they've never seen before. Phil Carli (who is suffering a cold) played for Hepworth's English melodrama 'Helen of Four Gates' (1921), while Andrew Simpson tackled two features: 'The Forbidden Trail' (1923), a lively Western, and 'Street of Forgotten Men' (1926), a dark Paramount drama. Andrew also "tackled" music for a few silent parts of a football short, the first film out of the can at 9 a.m.

I can learn so much by taking in their respective approaches. The big lesson is to keep something in reserve. No matter how exciting the opening scenes may be, keep it light so you have somewhere to go as the film progresses. Both Andrew and Phil do this very well, and it's something I still need to work at.

• I opened this morning with 'Bell Boy 13' (1923), a bouncy comedy starring Douglas MacLean. The music came out in bright primary colors, mostly around a simple tune that kept finding its way into everything, seemingly. It took awhile for me to settle in, but I'm feeling pretty good and eager to get to tomorrow's films. I have two: in the afternoon, a feminist drama called 'Partners Three' (1918), and then at 10 p.m. 'The Dark Mirror' (1920) a surrealist drama about a woman's dreams.

• I've been talking a lot with Andrew (here he is, above), and he's a really nice guy. His last name is Simpson and his hometown in Indiana is Shelbyville, so we immediately started singing bits from the 'Monorail' episode of The Simpsons, and then other musical parodies.

• This evening I got a chance to chat with movie critic Leonard Maltin, a long-time Cinefest attendee and supporter. I wanted to tell him that his book "The Great Movie Comedy Teams" was the first movie book I ever owned, and that I still have my paperback edition. Mr. Maltin was very gracious and eager to chat about all things film.

• Watched some but not all of the other programming. The highlight for me was 'Moonlight and Pretzels' (1933), a bizarre Depression-era musical from Universal that was screened this evening. Any film with William Frawley and a finale that includes stock footage of cattle and sheep (don't ask) gets my attention. And just to give you an idea about what the Cinfest crowd is like, the director credit for Karl Freund drew spontaneous applause!

• In non-film news, I squeezed in a three-mile run this afternoon (it's in the 60s here), preparation for the long run I want to do, probably on Saturday at this point. Also, I got up early and snuck off on my own for breakfast at the Miss Syracuse Diner. It's a bigger city than I thought -- something like 150,000 people in Syracuse itself, and 600,000 in the whole area. It's also where most of the salt came from in this country until about 1900.

The things you learn while on the road!

On the road to Cinefest in Syracuse, N.Y.

I'll be in Syracuse, N.Y. from Wednesday, March 14 through Sunday, March 18 as one of the musicians at this year's Cinefest. This is one of the big annual gatherings of vintage film buffs in the U.S., and I'm thrilled to be helping out. To any new friends, welcome to this running journal of adventures in silent film accompaniment!

Our first task comes Wednesday night, when the three accompanists gather with organizer Joe Yranski and decide who gets to do which film over the next four days. (Above: a scene from 'Hail the Woman' (1921), a melodrama on this year's program.)

Accompanists this year include veteran Phil Carli, whose work I find just phenomenal and who inspired me to start doing this, and Andrew Simpson, a very accomplished musician and composer from the Washington, D.C. area with a lot of silent film work to his credit.

Frankly, I'm amazed to be on the same program with talent of this caliber. I can only assume I was invited to serve as a "control factor" in some kind of experiment I'll learn about only later. "Hey, here's a study where they deliberately put a mediocre musician in among pros to see how listeners would respond." Or maybe they've worked out a promotional deal with a local grocer for low-priced vegetables, and want to ensure there's something to throw them at.

Seriously, I'm grateful to Joe Yranski, Ben Model, and other folks who've made this appearance possible. A public thanks to all!

Cinefest focuses on rare silents or early talkies that aren't generally available. In fact, many of the titles weren't announced until just last week, and the schedule is always subject to change. As for silents, this year's four-day program includes 12 features and a bevy of shorts, too, and yes, I've never seen any of them!

(If you're interested, here's the schedule; the festival is online at www.syracusecinefest.com.)

So in terms of music, that means creating a score on the fly, which is always an interesting challenge. Sometimes things fall together surprisingly well; other times, not so much. As they say when you go car-shopping, mileage my vary.

How do we decide who gets to tackle which film? From what Joe outlined, we simply take turns claiming titles until they're all spoken for. I wonder if it'll devolve into a silent film version of "Let's Make a Deal?" I'll give you a couple of Mack Sennett two-reelers in exchange for the Tom Mix feature... As a native New Hampshirite, I find myself drawn to 'Hail the Woman' (1921), which, according to Joe Yranski's notes, features "a bigoted New England farmer," a character type I feel qualified to conjure through music. But we'll see.

I'll report on things as I'm able. If you're at Cinefest, please say hello!

Update from Cinefest: Well, I'm here and it's Wednesday night. We've divided up the films and the features I'm playing are:

- Thursday, March 15, 9:55 a.m.: 'Bell Boy 13' (1923)
- Friday, March 16, 10:05 p.m.: 'The Dark Mirror' (1920)
- Saturday, March 17, sometime during 35mm show: 'Get Your Man' (1927)

Hey! That's only three. Somehow fellow accompanist Andrew Simpson wound up with five features instead of the four apiece. So I'll have to see what he'd like to do about this tomorrow...

Completing a busy stretch of accompaniment

This past Sunday's screening of 'Sunrise' (1927) in Wilton, N.H. marked the completion of a fairly intense six weeks of silent film accompaniment. Starting with 'Metropolis' (1927) on New Year's Eve in Concord, N.H., I did 14 separate shows at venues that ranged from smalltown theatres to a sci-fi/fantasy convention in Boston, with an educational farm in New York State mixed in for good measure.

For a complete round-up, check out the 'Info on Past Screenings' page on this blog. The numbers don't add up, by the way, because the public list doesn't include two Friday morning screenings I did for a film class at Southern New Hampshire University. Silent film at 9:30 a.m.!

One reason I booked so many screenings during this time was that I'm hoping it helps me get ready for two high-profile public accompaniment gigs that are well beyond my usual orbit. The last weekend of February sees me at the Kansas Silent Film Festival, where I'll do music for Harry Langdon's 'Tramp Tramp Tramp' (1926) and some short films. And then mid-March finds me as one of a trio of accompanists at Cinefest, the large vintage film confab held each year in Syracuse, N.Y.

This last one is a bit daunting because my colleagues are two extremely capable musicians whom I consider absolutely tops in the field of silent film accompaniment: Phil Carli and Andrew Simpson. I've long admired Carli's work, which I've heard live and on many recorded scores. I'm less familiar with Simpson's music, but what I've heard has been top-notch. Still, they both hold doctorates in music and have long lists of accomplishments to their credit.

And then there's me. How do I get into these things? But still, I'm eager to go and contribute what I can, and benefit from the experience. And one way to prepare for this is what I did during the past six weeks: just play a lot of live shows and get the momentum going so there's something to work with when the big gigs arrive.

I find that it really helps. The last couple of screenings produced what I thought were splendid scores with minimal preparation. A double feature of 'The Sheik' (1921) and 'Son of the Sheik' (1926) on Thursday, Feb. 9 in Plymouth, N.H. fell together amazingly well, and 'Sunrise' (1927) on Sunday, Feb. 12 in Wilton, N.H. was a very satisfying effort. (For that one, I even managed to use my grandmother's old brass school bell to lend atmosphere for Murnau's shots of the village in sihouette.)

All of this was prompted, of course, by Valentine's Day, which is tomorrow (Tuesday, Feb. 14) as I write this. Last week's Valentino program at the Flying Monkey Moviehouse up in Plymouth drew about 35 people—not a bad figure, at least when compared to the grand total of five (five!) people who attended the January screening of 'The Birth of a Nation' at the same venue.

I had previewed 'The Sheik' that afternoon but did not prepare any special thematic material, just to see how I did playing the film 'cold.' Right off the bat, I thought I managed to set the atmosphere perfectly with a modal melody played in one of my synthesizer's 'World Music' settings, and things stayed solid from then on. With each change of scene, I shifted between World Music, Traditional Orchestra, and Strings, and each time I hit it right on the money. Created some pretty good stuff in the strings, I thought, when things begin to get hot and heavy between Valentino and Agnes Ayres—one sustained dissonance after another underneath climbing scales all based on the modal melody I started with.

I was less prepared for 'Son of the Shiek' but it still came out very well, I thought. (That's a goofy picture of me at the Flying Monkey, by the way, just to show how I don't prepare my personal appearance, either.) Most miraculously, I came up with a "running figure" for the first scenes of Valentino riding his horse, and this little figure proved to be extremely versatile, gradually becoming the heart of the score. And though as a matter of pride I try to create new material for the second picture of any double feature, because this sequel featured Valentino playing his father (the Sheik in the first film), I could justify reuse of the "sheik" theme from the first movie.

'Son' is a bit harder to score effectively, I think, because it's a richer and more confident film, with more humor embedded in it, and far less mannered than the original. But I stayed with it and tried to keep it all going throughout the program, which amounts to more than 2½ hours of film (and music) without a break.

I prefer no intermission not because I'm a sadist, but because I believe that the best silent film casts a spell, and once that spell is broken (by an intermission), it takes time to recover. So I generally like to play right through any program without a break. In terms of endurance, the Valentino double feature felt like 'The Birth of a Nation' with sand, but actually the time seems to fly. Once I'm 'in the zone' and absorbed in responding to a film musically, time ceases to exist.

This approach does have its drawbacks. Prior to 'The Birth of a Nation' in January, I had drunk maybe a half-dozen cups of tea in an unheated Chinese restaurant (ah, the glamour of New Hampshire in mid-January), and then found myself in, er, extreme discomfort starting about a half-hour into the show. (I remember thinking to myself, "Cripes, the Civil War hasn't even started yet!") So for me, 'The Birth of a Nation' was uncomfortable to watch, but not for the usual reasons.

For the Valentino double feature, I learned my lesson: fluids to a minimum, and visit the men's room just prior. And because we're comparing 'Birth,' let me point out that 'The Sheik' is full of blatant racism that's no less embarrassing than anything D.W. Griffith put before a movie cameras. In 'The Sheik,' not only are "Arabs" portrayed as uncivilized and uneducated savages (oh, but they're happy savages), but the film's love story is resolved only at the end, when Agnes Ayres observes that Valentino has "small hands for a Arab," which prompted the revelation (from Adolph Menjou, of all people)that the Sheik is actually the son of English and Spanish nobility. Oh, such joy in Western Civilization Land! Our audience couldn't help but laugh at this, and I didn't blame them.

'Sunrise' is a film I've wanted to do for a long time, but wanted to wait until I felt I had the technique and equipment and skill to do it justice. So putting it at the end of this run of screenings was kind of like my "final exam" prior to the gigs in Topeka and Syracuse. I'm proud to say that I was very satisfied with how it came out—I felt the music brought out the drama in the film, helped punctuate the big moments, but didn't get in the way. We had about 100 people on hand, and afterwards more than one gave me the ultimate compliment: that the music matched the movie so well that they forgot it was being created live. Nice!

I guess I need to find a way to easily post sound files to this site, as I would love to share the thematic material I used for 'Sunrise.' It was a very symphonic score, if I do say so, with no filled-out tunes but instead a collection of cells that all proved versatile in bringing director Murnau's visions to life for an audience in 2012. There was one especially important meldodic scrap that sounded quite insubstantial at first, but later morphed quite on its own into something menacing and heart-breaking at the same time, and was immensely useful in keeping the emotional tempo of the film going along with Murnau's at-times incredible visions.

Speaking of which: I would love to visit the city portrayed by the City Woman near the start of the film, where dance bands come equipped with a half-dozen Sousaphones all swaying in unison. What is it with Murnau and horn bells? Remember the trumpet in 'The Last Laugh' (1924)? Also, there's defintely a thing in 'Sunrise' for windows: the opening glass train shed, the windows into the dance hall, and so on.

Back to the music: the only actual "tune" in the score was a Peasant Dance that George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor do near the end of the city scenes. This tune, which keeps going through my head this morning, just came to me the morning of the show, and is related to the jingle for "Sunbeam Bread" that I had been hearing on the radio all week long prior to this. Funny how things evolve and cross-pollinate.

One thing I find interesting about 'Sunrise' was how Murnau made it seem timeless. There are very few references to contemporary culture or specific locations. The city is simply a city. The country is simply the country. Is it in Europe? America? Shangri-la? There's a lake and a row boat, and a wedding in a church—simple and basic things that we still accept today as part of the landscape around us. I think that helps lend the film a universal quality that still comes through today, even though clearly many things have changed (barbershops, photographers) in the 85 years since this picture played in theaters.

Probably the funniest reaction was from a colleague of mine, who mistook Murnau's universal urban setting as some kind of science fiction conceit, which prompted this response: "What kind of city of the future has a carnival in which you heave things to make piglets go down a slide?"

Okay, so now it's time to focus on 'Tramp Tramp Tramp' and get ready for Syracuse after that. Better get out the Hanon technical exercises...