Pianist to Accompany Buster Keaton Film
GREAT BARRINGTON – Ben Model, noted silent film piano accompanist, will accompany Buster Keaton's "Sherlock Jr." at Bard College at Simon's Rock on Thursday, Jan. 31, at 7 p.m.The event is free and open to the public and will take place in the Daniel Arts Center.
For more than two decades, Model has been resident silent film accompanist for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. In addition, he has played in many other venues around the Northeast, and produces The Silent Clowns Film Series with film historian Bruce Lawton. He also will talk with students of filmmaker Larry Burke.
Model composes and improvises his own scores, and performs in a style that is both evocative of the silent era and also aware of a contemporary (and younger) audience's experience with music and film scoring. He often introduces the films he accompanies. In 2006, he was an organizer of MoMA's two-month retrospective of the films of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.
Model grew up watching silent movies at the home of Walter Kerr, drama critic and author of "The Silent Clowns" (Knopf, 1975). He also accompanied silent movies for noted film historian William K. Everson's classes at New York University while attending film school there, and learned the craft and technique of silent film scoring from legendary silent film organist Lee Erwin.
