Author: Ben Model

  • 7 shows in 6 days

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    Ben Model

    Played for seven shows in the last six days. Performing every day for a stretch like this happens every once in a while. A little traveling involved, but not way far out of town. Sunday afternoon was the final program for The Silent Clowns Film Series, and we had a real nice turnout…around 80 people.…

  • altscore.com plugged on Bioscope blog

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    Ben Model

    There’s a nice write-up on my altscore.com site at the Bioscope blog, run by Luke McKernan. Click here to read it!

  • sharing the bill with Bernstein, Barber and Williams

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    Ben Model

    Here’s a review of a concert by the Green Bay Civic Symphony from yesterday. The orchestra’s final concert of the season was comprised of movie music by Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, and John Williams. Oh yeah, and me. They performed my orchestral score to Charlie Chaplin’s The Adventurer (score was originally commissioned in 2000 by…

  • April update part 1

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    Ben Model

    Well…a month has flown by since my last posting, and much has happened. no way to catch up but to do it in pieces. Here’s an initial stab at catching up… Last week I spent three days recording scores for ten comedy shorts for the upcoming American Slapstick 2 DVD set from AllDay Entertainment. Five…

  • altscore.com site launched!

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    Ben Model

    This week I launched www.altscore.com, finally. I’ve had this idea for several months but have finally had the down time to build the site and record scores for it. The site is a place where people can purchase and download MP3’s of piano or organ scores by me for silent films they have on DVD.…

  • Silent Clowns Keaton show in NY Times!

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    Ben Model

  • Chaplin’s “Adventurer” for concert band

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    Ben Model

    Well, March is here — and while my sched of performances is a tad lighter, I’m plenty busy with recording and re-arranging. A high school in Connecticut contacted me a couple months ago about doing a silent film program with one of my orchestral scores…but the school has a band and no orchestra (not too…

  • Next week…Langdon, Chaplin, Wings and Ben Hur

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    Ben Model

    Spent the afternoon yesterday recording a piano score for The Gusher (1913) for Kino. Am assuming the set this is for will come out later this year. An interesting and fun short, one of those Keystones where you really have to watch everybody to see what the story is, as much of the plot is…

  • films booked for Huntington; “It” unavailable

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    Ben Model

    BTW, click on the image at the right to pre-order your copy of Kino’s new 3-disc DVD set Houdini: the Movie Star. Checked my copy and was glad to see everything was in synch. The menus are great, and that front cover artwork is real eye-catching. Several of the films I’ll be accompanying in Huntington,…

  • Andrew Simpson (from DC)

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    Ben Model

    Today got to hear and hang out with Andrew Simpson, a film accompanist from Washington DC. I’d met Andrew, who’s been playing for silents for a few years, at Slapsticon last year. Andrew and his “Snark Ensemble” recorded scores for many of the films on the new Harry Langdon DVD set, and has played for…