Ben Model’s blog

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Well, the Musical Movies event was a big success. We had a great crowd, the orchestra sounded great, Dr. Saunders kept the group in synch with both films, and the Arbuckle film Love went over big time, as did the sound of the theatre organ. After the audience was greeted…

  • 6:45am – here I am just after doing a live TV segment on KIVI channel 6’s “Good Morning Live”with Melissa Paul. Just made it in time, thanks to snowfall and fog etc. Then I was whisked off to… KBOI radio. We did 5-6 mins talking about what I do and…

  • Well, I just flew in from New York and boy are my arms tired. Was picked up at the airport and taken straight to NBC affil KTVB to be on News at Noon, along with Dr. Paul Collins (seen above, with me and host Larry Gebert on set), Tom Trusky…