New Sounds Live Silent Film Series
Live performances of original scores by the Alloy Orchestra to classic silent films.

World Financial Center Winter Garden
Blackmail - Wednesday, February 7th at 7PM
The Eagle - Thursday, February 8th at 7PM
The General - Friday, February 9th at 7PM
220 Vesey Street
Battery Park City ››› Directions
Admission FREE
» New Sounds Live 2006-2007 Concert Season

Take in classic silent films with new music scores under glass. The long-awaited New Sounds Live winter film series returns to the World Financial Center featuring silent films set to innovative and energetic scores by the Alloy Orchestra, the purveyors of the famed "rack of junk." All of these performances will be taped for later broadcast on 93.9 FM WNYC.

Blackmail
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, 1929.
Hitchcock’s story of murder and deceit was his last silent film and his first talkie (partway through filming the producers decided to add sound to the project). Alice White (Anny Ondra), the film’s heroine, is bored with her detective boyfriend Frank and plans a clandestine rendezvous with another man. At their meeting, great drama unfolds involving bread knives and forgotten items of clothing. A petty thief, Tracy, witnesses Alice's comings and goings, and attempts to blackmail Frank and Alice, culminating in scenes filmed at the British Museum and Scotland Yard. Look for the special cameo by Hitchcock - it's his longest performance in any of his films.

The Eagle
Directed by Clarence Brown, 1925.
Based on a Pushkin novel, The Eagle stars Rudolph Valentino as a Russian cossack who is the special favorite of the formidable Tsarina Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser). He spurns her attentions, preferring not to be a kept consort. When his lands are stolen from him, Valentino transforms into a Robin-Hood-like masked avenger. Vilma Banky plays the daughter of the man who killed Valentino's own father. Despite his thirst for revenge, our hero falls in love with Vilma, who goes the "Lois Lane" route of adoring the masked-avenger Valentino but disdaining the unmasked Rudy, little guessing that the two are one in the same. Watch quickly for Gary Cooper as one of Valentino's masked minions. (AllMovie Guide)

The General
Directed by Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926
Buster Keaton plays Johnny Gray, a Southern railroad engineer who loves his train engine, The General, almost as much as he loves Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). When the opening shots of the Civil War are fired at Fort Sumter, Johnny tries to enlist -- and he is deemed too useful as an engineer to be a soldier. All Johnny knows is that he's been rejected, and Annabelle, thinking him a coward, turns her back on him. When Northern spies steal the General (and, unwittingly, Annabelle), the story switches from drama and romance to adventure mixed with Keaton's trademark deadpan humor as he uses every means possible to catch up to the General, thwart the Yankees, and rescue his darling Annabelle -- for starters. (AllMovie Guide)


Alloy Orchestra
Famed for its "rack of junk," the Alloy Orchestra is arguably the finest modern-day purveyor of silent movie scores in this country. For almost 15 years, the Cambridge-based band has conquered legions of fans with its kinetic, percussion-heavy accompaniment to films as varied as Nosferatu, Steamboat Bill, Jr. and Man with a Movie Camera. Using both traditional synthesizers and drums as well as an outrageous assemblage of peculiar objects (horseshoes, air-conditioner ducts, trunk springs, an out-of-tune zither, plumbing pipes), the band brings new life to classics frequently overlooked by popular film audiences.
Consisting of Boston rock and improv scene veterans Ken Winokur and Terry Donahue (both formerly members of the Concussion Ensemble), as well as Roger Miller (best known as Mission of Burma's frontman), Alloy can conjure up a French symphony or a simple German bar band of the 20's. The group can make the audience think it is being attacked by tigers, contacted by radio signals from Mars or swept up in the Russian Revolution.
Alloy collaborates with some of the worlds best archives and collectors (such as the George Eastman House, The British Film Institute, Film Preservation Associates and The Douris Corporation) to present audiences with the very best available prints of some of history's greatest film.

» Alloy Orchestra
» New Sounds Live 2006-2007 Concert Season
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