The Alloy Orchestra to accompany three silent films on Sept. 28 & 29

[Press release from the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

The late Roger Ebert called the Alloy Orchestra “the best in the world at accompanying silent films.” On September 28 and 29, this internationally known three-member band from Boston will come to the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque to play for three different silent classics: Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS and two Lon Chaney movies, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and HE WHO GETS SLAPPED.

 

METROPOLIS, which will show on Saturday, September 28 at 8:00 pm, is the movie that made the Alloy Orchestra famous. It remains their most popular score. This 1927 German sci-fi spectacular—about a gleaming futuristic city where the wealthy lead lives of luxury above ground while worker drones toil on machinery underground (until a robot gets them to revolt)—is the perfect vehicle for the Alloy sound, a distinctive mix of clarinet, accordion, electronics, and junk metal percussion. Though the band has accompanied METROPOLIS at the Cinematheque a few times over the years, the September 28 performance will be the East Side Cleveland premiere of their score to the complete METROPOLIS, a 2010 restoration of the movie that is 25 minutes (and 25%) longer than the longest previous cut.

 

Alloy Orchestra returning to the Cinematheque

[Press release from the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

The Alloy Orchestra, a Boston band that Roger Ebert has called “the best in the world at accompanying silent films” (and whose last performance in Cleveland, a 2010 Cinematheque showing of METROPOLIS at the Capitol Theatre, sold out the house), will return to the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque on Thursday, October 4.

The ensemble’s three members will lend their distinctive mix of clarinet, accordion, electronics, and junk metal percussion to two movies that they have never before performed in Cleveland, both Soviet silents shown in rare 35mm prints.

Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg’s 1926 film version of Gogol’s THE OVERCOAT will show at 7:00 pm. And a movie recently voted the eighth best film of all time, Dziga Vertov’s MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929), will follow at 8:45 pm for a separate admission fee. THE OVERCOAT, the Alloy’s newest score, will be performed at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center two days before they bring it to Cleveland. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA is frequently cited as their best score.