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 unusual for a high school). I’m in the process of re-arranging my orchestral score for Chaplin’s The Adventurer for concert band, and it will be performed in June at the school. I was found by the school’s social studies teacher, who was interested in giving the students a chance to fully experience what silent film was.
I’m busy recording and HTML-ing for a hush-hush project — will divulge details hopefully by end of March if not sooner, depending on when the site is ready to launch.
This Sunday the Silent Clowns series will show Keaton’s Seven Chances — and as far as I know we will be getting a nice little write-up with a photo in tomorrow’s NY Times. Will clip, scan and post it here when it happens (or if…you never know in this kwazy business).
Tuesday I will be playing and talking at an NYU silent film class taught by Antonia Lant. Antonia came to one of my SCFS shows some years back, and I’ve been playing for her class once a year ever since. Contacted the Columbia Film Dept about doing this, and was told (as I’d been told before a year or two ago) that there is no money in the budget for this sort of thing. I find it interesting that there is money at universities outside NYC — Vassar, Bard, Simon’s Rock, Wesleyan, et al., where I’ve played a few times — and yet colleges like Columbia, Queens College, CUNY etc have no $ or enough interest to find it. NYU is probably the lowest-paying gig I do all year…but it’s my alma mater and the place where I got my start so I’ve a soft spot for helping them out.
Last week, I was asked to be one of the accompanists at this year’s Cinefest in Syracuse, NY when one of their regular accompanists unexpectedly became unavailable. Unfortunately I will be away someplace else for a weekend of R&R with my family, parents and sister and her family. Too bad, as friends and colleagues have been asking me to at least attend the Cinefest convention for the last couple of years. Oh well. Maybe next year…
My summer schedule is starting to materialize already. Have at least 3 shows lined up for August, and am looking forward to hearing about the silents planned for MoMA’s annual To Save and Project film preservation fest, which runs in June sometime.
See you at the silents!
Ben Model
silent film accompanist