Category: Theatre Organ
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“The Sound of the Silents”
This punny title was applied to a number of LPs of theatre organ music in the 1970s, and was often used as the headline for a news item about a silent film screening that featured the mighty Wurlitzer. It’s still in use from time to time, highlighting the mere fact that there is live music.…
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Silent Movie Time Machine
“Tidsmaskin” is one of the Norwegian words I’ve managed to retain. Pronounced TEEDS-mah-sheen, it means “time machine”. I’ve found over the years that I have an affinity for being in the places where silent film happened. Props, pieces of costuming, less so. Inhabiting the spaces where silent films were shown or made conjure up an…
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The Sounds of the Silents — Theatre Organ on DVD
One of the reasons a majority of people associate the piano with silent film, as opposed to theatre organ or orchestra, is that it had been the type of accompaniment utilized the most on a majority of home video editions of silent films. I’d like to address a question that came in from my recent series…
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The Sounds of the Silents — Theatre Organ Accompaniment in NYC, part 3
When I meet people from other parts of the country and tell them I’m a silent film accompanist , they are often surprised when I tell them there are (currently) no theater organs in Manhattan. There are instruments around the west coast, several areas in the Midwest and the southeast US that get used for…
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The Sounds of the Silents — Theatre Organ Accompaniment in NYC, part 2
When I began playing for silent films while at NYU film school I made a point of meeting all the accompanists in NYC. It was at the Carnegie Hall Cinema that I met theatre organist and composer Lee Erwin. I got to hear him accompany films on theatre organ for a number of years before…
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The Sounds of the Silents — Theatre Organ Accompaniment in NYC, part 1
The sound of the theatre pipe organ as live accompaniment to silent films was part of the musical landscape in NYC during the peak years of what I think of as silent film’s first renaissance. Lee Erwin played a silent film show in 1968 at the Beacon Theatre, and was sort the unofficial “house organist”…
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Lee Erwin And…Nas?
A Silent Film Cue Played on a Wurlitzer Gets Sampled On A Rap Record Lee Erwin’s silent film scores are not that easy to find and listen to. Luckily the tracks he recorded for several Buster Keaton features are on the now out-of-print “ultimate edition” DVD and Blu-ray releases from Kino. You can also hear…
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Hooray for Hollywood and the 2018 TCM Classic Film Festival
Three Songs You Won’t Hear During My Accompaniment to “Show People” — and Why One of the bugaboos in film accompaniment that my mentor Lee Erwin (1908-2000) had, and one I share, is the use of “song title puns”. In fact, anything that make an audience member’s brain say “Hey! She’s/he’s playing ______!” instead of…