Silent films come to life at the Rowland Theatre
The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra is returning to the Rowland Theatre for a presentation of “The Clown Princes.” The orchestra plays original music with silent films, as they were originally done a hundred years ago. Tickets are available for the Saturday, April 26, show at rowlandtheatre.com or at the door.
Paragon Ragtime Orchestra returns with ‘The Clown Princes’
By Julie Rae Rickard
PHILIPSBURG — The time machine that is the Rowland Theatre in Philipsburg is gearing up to take guests back in time during the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra’s visit Saturday, April 26.
The orchestra performs original music with silent films, recreating how moviegoers first enjoyed films, complete with opportunities to boo at the villains and cheer for the heroes.
This year’s presentation is “The Clown Princes,” featuring Charlie Chaplin’s “A Dog’s Life.” Written, directed and produced by Chaplin, the film was released April 14, 1918, and was Chaplin’s first production for First National Pictures after he signed a $1 million contract with the company, according to online records.
Chaplin, best known as the character, the Tramp, first appearing in the film by the same name, preferred complete control over his films. Chaplin wrote the music for his silent pictures and had a reputation of being a perfectionist.
In 1972, he received an honorary Oscar from the Academy Awards for his long work in film, which continued into the 1970s. The crowd gave him a 12-minute standing ovation.
In his presentation, then Academy President Daniel Taradash quoted Chaplin as saying “my only enemy is time.” Taradash countered this by saying “We respectfully disagree. For wherever and whenever there is communication, a screen and an audience, whether here on earth and now or in some unfathomable future on some faraway star, time is Charlie Chaplin’s dearest and eternal friend.”
Time has indeed not forgotten Chaplin and events like the show at the Rowland Theatre with his original music, continue to showcase his amazing talent.
Paragon Ragtime Orchestra
The orchestra performing at the Rowland has become a popular, annual event.
“There is really nothing like watching a 100-year-old silent film in a movie theatre that probably played the movie when it first came out,” said Rebecca Inlow, board member of the Rowland Theatre.
“It’s so fun to think that you are sitting in the same place someone a century ago sat, watching the same film in the same way someone would have experienced it then,” Inlow said.
The PRO “is the world’s only year-round, professional ensemble re-creating ‘America’s Original Music’ — the syncopated sounds of early musical theater, silent cinema, and vintage dance,” according to their website, paragonragtime.com.
It began in 1985 after Rick Benjamin discovered thousands of orchestra scores once belonging to Victrola recording star Arthur Pryor.
The orchestra made its formal debut in 1988 at Alice Tully Hall — the first concert ever presented at Lincoln Center by such an ensemble, according to the orchestra’s biography on its website.
“Since then PRO has appeared at hundreds of leading arts venues, including the Ravinia Festival, the Smithsonian Institution, Chautauqua, the Brucknerhaus (Austria), the New York 92nd Street Y and the American Dance Festival.
“Over the years the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra has been heard on the soundtracks of several motion pictures and television programs. The orchestra’s audio and video recordings have been widely praised, and considered instrumental in rekindling interest in America’s rich traditions of theater, cinema, and dance orchestra music.”
Benjamin is known as the leading conductor of music for silent films, with over 760 screenings to his credit. His extensive research in early movie music is ongoing, and has led him to create one of the “world’s best archives of silent film scores — nearly 1,000 titles ranging from 1898 to 1928.”
Benjamin has written articles on American music that have been published in several international journals, and his lecture tours have taken him to more than 100 colleges and universities across North America. His reconstruction of the Scott Joplin opera Treemonisha was premiered to great acclaim in San Francisco and on tours.
A recording by Benjamin and the PRO is available in a 2-CD album set for New World Records.
Benjamin is working on two books: “The American Theater Orchestra” and “Encyclopedia of Arrangers & Orchestrators: 1875-1925.”
Several recordings of the orchestra — including Sounds of the American Silent Cinema, You’re a Grand Old Rag: The Music of George M. Cohan and Treemonisha — are available on their website.
Tickets for the PRO show at the Rowland are $25 and can be purchased online at the rowlandtheatre.com or at the door. More information on the Rowland can be found on their Facebook page.