Despite being in everybody's line of sight, moving and making lots of sound, Stephen Warner faded into the background Friday night.
And that is just as it should be when you're an organist accompanying a movie.
The Ann Arbor resident was in town for the holidays and also to perform live to the film "Our Hospitality,” a classic Buster Keaton film from 1923. He wowed the audience of more than 200 at two sold out shows by being nearly invisible. This despite his prominent position at the 1924 Wurlitzer's console just under the screen set up just outside the museum's Hurry Back Saloon.
The final event of the Music House Museum's very successful four-part Silent Film Series, Warner picked the film, created the compiled score and performed two
demanding shows back to back.
"I grew up watching this museum get built and I've been waiting to play this organ since I was ten years old,” said Warner, a University of Michigan graduate with degrees in organ performance and engineering. "It's a good organ, this is my first performance on it. I'm still kind of getting to know it, really.”
Warner, who makes a living as an organist and organ technician in the Ann Arbor and Detroit area, chose the film for this season-closing event. One advantage of the modern era is that he had the luxury of many rehearsals before the shows. Warner purchased a copy of the comedy/drama on DVD and could practice the music he chose as much as he wanted.
"It's a challenging film, the moods change fast and you have to pace it,” noted Warner, who also played Christmas Carols before the show. "My goal when accompanying a silent movie is for them to really forget that I'm there.”
Organists from the early days of film would have, if they were lucky, one or two runs to learn the song before going live. Sometimes a film included a cue sheet but often the musician had to choose the music and assemble the score, rehearsing on the fly before a show opened.
"That's the interesting thing, the experience of each film was different at each location,” Warner said. "As I play, I'm watching what they're doing, basically trying to know what they're doing well enough so you can go with it. It's 75 minutes and extremely exhausting.”
The restored 1924 Wurlitzer, rescued before demolition of the Cinderella Theater in Detroit, debuted with a presentation of "Phantom of the Opera” in October of 2005. The museum had purchased the organ in 1985 and began a 20-year restoration odyssey that brought the 13-rank, 961-pipe instrument back to its original glory. The high ceiling of the barn-like main building allows the organ's sound to reverberate through the museum.
Before the main attraction Friday evening, the museum showed a film made by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company during its heyday. This piece documented the construction process of 3,500 organs over 20 years. During the peak year of 1928, the company made 355 instruments, a rate of nearly one a day.
"This organ was made in August of 1924 for the Cinderella Theater and cost $8,000-9,000,” said Andy Strubel, curator of the Music House Museum. "It was a neighborhood theater with 1,800 seats.”
Thrilled with the sell-out Friday and the overall positive response of the 2006 series, Strubel anticipates that the Music House Museum will host another series this year.
For more information on the Music House Museum, call 938-9300 or see their web site at www.musichouse.org.