Ben Model’s blog

  • Oct 16 – Traveled to Essex, NY for a show (on 10/17) of “The General” (DVD projection of the new Kino disc). Could’ve flown to Burlington VT on JetBlue and taken a ferry across Lake Champlain but, let me tell ya folks, Amtrak is the only way to fly. Both…

  • October 13 and 14 found me at MoMA playing for a program of Griffith Biograph shorts, as part of Charles Silver’s series. The Weds show was in Bartos, on the Modus digital, and the Thurs show was in Titus 2, on the Steinway. (The T2 instrument, BTW, was Blanchette Rockefeller’s…

  • Sunday Oct 11 was our maiden voyage at the Arclight Theatre. Our audience really loved the new, more intimate space and the films looked great in there. Piano is an old Somebody & Someone upright, which I’d tuned a week or two before and seems to have held. The action…

  • Over the weekend, someone bought and downloaded my piano score MP3 that synchs with the Kino DVD/VHS of Sherlock Jr. with Buster Keaton. I opened my virtual mailbag this morning to find this kind note: I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate your making the “Sherlock Jr.”…

  • There’s an article in the Oct 14 issue of the Queens Gazette about last week’s show of Metropolis that I spotted online. Click here to read the article. The writer did a nice job, and quoted me on a couple of things and mentioned the Silent Clowns series as well.

  • Sat, Oct 10 — the first silent film program in this bi-monthly series sponsored by the Brooklyn chapter of the AGO was sparsely attended, unfortunately. The people who came, however, got to hear that magnificent instrument in action. The acoustics in the church are great, and I had fun using…

  • October 8, 7:30pm — after playing for the Melies/Zecca matinee program (second time, on Thurs), I headed out to QTIP, or Queens Theatre in the Park for this screening of Metropolis that was part of a weekly series that AMMI was doing in a partnership with the theater. The theater…

  • George Melies and his RivalsLe Voyage dans la lune (A Voyage to the Moon) 1902. France. Directed by Georges Méliès. 13 min.Barbe-Bleue 1901. France. Directed by Georges Méliès. 10 min.Les Sept Chateaux du diable (Seven Castles of the Devil) 1902. France. Directed by Ferdinand Zecca. 12 min.Le Voyage à travers…

  • Oct 4 at 9:30 am (!) found me at MoMA bright and early for a private screening for a handful of young girls, their American Girl dolls, and the girls’ moms, a Grandma and a Dad. This was another one of the promotional events linked to American Girl’s new Rebecca…

  • My third time performing at the Bay Street Theater found me with the Miditzer in tow. This was a request from Bay Street, and they covered a rental car for me to bring the instrument out (I don’t own a car, and the Hampton Jitney wouldn’t exactly work). The other…