FIRST OF A GENRE: A scene from “The Cat and the Canary,” to be screened at the Princeton Garden Theater on October 7. The ensemble Not So Silent Cinema, a favorite with local film buffs, will provide live music.
By Anne Levin
When pianist Brendan Cooney agreed, last minute, to fill in for a friend and accompany a screening of the 1922 silent film Nosferatu, he had never seen a silent movie before. But the experience sparked something in the Philadelphia-based musician. Within a year, Cooney had created Not So Silent Cinema (NSSC), a chamber ensemble that performs original music at silent film screenings.
Familiar to local audiences from previous appearances at the Princeton Garden Theatre, NSSC will return to accompany a screening of the 1927 film The Cat and the Canary on Wednesday, October 7 at 7:30 p.m.
“It was an accident,” Cooney said of his first encounter with silent movies in 2010. “But I had a great time, mostly improvising music for this film. I immediately thought this was a really fun way of doing music — playing live to a moving image, thinking cinematically about composition and improvisation. And this was a different kind of audience than I would normally play for. I saw potential.”
Cooney composed a score for a quintet to accompany Nosferatu. “It was a big hit,” he said. “We did a few more films, and started to make a real project out of it. Then it just became a regular thing. Every year, I write a couple of new scores, or co-write with others in the band. It’s a mix of different musicians, but mostly with the same group. We now have almost 20 scores in the repertoire.”
Raised in Indiana, Cooney studied jazz piano and moved to Philadelphia to teach and play music. “I play a lot of different styles with different groups,” he said. “It’s fun to find other musicians who are really cross-disciplinary — good readers, good technicians, but also able to improvise. It’s not in a jazz style, but they have to think cinematically.”
The Cat and the Canary, billed as the first-ever haunted-house mystery film, fits right into NSSC’s repertoire. Director Paul Leni, a German Expressionist who moved to Hollywood in 1927, made his U.S. debut with the feature.
“Leni’s use of shadows, moving cameras, moving text, and high-contrast camera angles shows how sophisticated visual storytelling had become by 1927,” reads a release from NSSC. “These devices set this film apart from other films in the NSSC repertoire made just a few years earlier.”
Elaborating in a phone conversation, Cooney described the film as focused on “a bunch of people trapped in an old, spooky mansion and wondering who the murderer was. It was the first of a genre, and has been remade several times and inspired other films,” he said. “It’s spooky, but also comical, not meant to be a modern horror thriller. It’s tongue-in-cheek, with a campy vibe. It’s goofy. But the camera work is really clever. There are some good, tight timings, some really funny and well-done camera shots. They did a good job with this production.”
NSSC recently accompanied the silent film The Lodger by Alfred Hitchcock at Philadelphia’s Mutter Museum. Future appearances include the Hiway Theatre in Jenkintown, Pa., and the Glen Foerd Mansion in Philadelphia. NSSC will also perform at screenings of The Cat and the Canary at the County Theater in Doylestown, Pa., on October 14; and the Ambler Theater in Ambler, Pa., on October 21. Cooney hopes to do a new score for the film Metropolis, which celebrates its 100th anniversary next year.
“I’ve always composed in some capacity, for student ensembles, and small jazz or chamber groups. From doing this, I got interested in writing for other film and television applications. I worked for a long time for an animation studio, and I still do some of that. But this (NSSC) is something I really enjoy. And we have a following.”
The Princeton Garden Theater is at 160 Nassau Street. Visit princetongardentheatre.org for ticket information.