The Baguette Quartette is a San Francisco Bay Area group that plays music that was heard in Paris between 1920 and 1940 on street corners, in cafes, and in popular dance halls. Its repertoire consists of valses musettes, tangos, pasos dobles, fox trots, marches and realistic songs. After performing … [Read more...] about Baguette Quartette
Berklee Silent Film Orchestra
Berklee Silent Film Orchestra is dedicated to composing and performing new, original scores for silent classics. Based at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, which houses the world’s only undergraduate degree program in film scoring, this all-student orchestra works under the leadership of three- … [Read more...] about Berklee Silent Film Orchestra
Wayne Barker
WAYNE BARKER has garnered acclaim both for his original compositions and live performances in the theater, including a Tony nomination for best original score on Peter and the Starcatcher. His numerous credits include piano scores for Beth Henley’s Laugh, an homage to silent-era slapstick; and Joe … [Read more...] about Wayne Barker
Frank Bockius
Versatile percussionist FRANK BOCKIUS specializes in jazz and is versed in medieval, flamenco, and Latin music styles. He has performed for dance and theater companies as well as in his own bands, including the jazz quintet Whisper Hot and the percussion ensemble Timpanicks. He joined Guenter … [Read more...] about Frank Bockius
How to Kill a Villain
This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of The Phantom of the Opera at A Day of Silents 2019 The version of The Phantom of the Opera that we see today does not share the melancholy ending of Gaston Leroux’s source novel. A villain dying of a broken heart did not satisfy … [Read more...] about How to Kill a Villain
The Phantom of the Opera
Before Dracula, before Frankenstein, before the Universal Pictures Corporation understood there was money to be made scaring the bejesus out of its audience, there was the Phantom. He is the unholy spawn of three mismatched parents: a French writer who claimed his fiction was fact-based, a brilliant … [Read more...] about The Phantom of the Opera
Acting Like Lubitsch
This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of The Marriage Circle at A Day of Silents 2019 A stage actor before he was a film director Ernst Lubitsch was notorious for acting out the roles for his performers down to the smallest gesture. As exasperating as it may have been to … [Read more...] about Acting Like Lubitsch
The Marriage Circle
Ernst Lubitsch’s marriage movies are sophisticated, witty, and timeless, and one of the best is his 1924 film, The Marriage Circle. It takes place in Vienna, “the city of laughter and light romance,” and it begins with an unexpected focus: a man has a hole in the toe of his sock. It’s a very … [Read more...] about The Marriage Circle