Heights residents turn film screenings into concerts

Heights resident David Blazer will play live organ music at a May 4 screening of this classic silent film.

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Heights residents and musicians are bringing the experience of movies with live music back to Cleveland-area theaters.

Are these movies accompanied by live music? Concerts paired with films? Regardless, the Cleveland Silent Film Festival (CSFF), founded by Cleveland Heights resident Emily Laurance, has scheduled monthly screenings of classic films with live music this spring and summer. The screenings are free and open to the public; no reservations are required. For additional information, visit www.clevelandsilentfilmfestival.org/.

As part of the festival, Cleveland Heights’ David Blazer, the organist at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Rocky River, will play the organ for a May 4, 7 p.m. screening of Buster Keaton’s classic comedy “Steamboat Bill Jr.” at the church. 

Playing for films is Blazer’s family legacy. His grandmother played piano for silents in his hometown of Miami, Okla., and would tell him stories about those showings from the time he was a small boy. When he grew up, Blazer attended Oberlin Conservatory; he has lived in the area ever since, settling first in Amherst, then Rocky River—where he was the organist at St. Christopher’s Parish for 21 years—and now in Cleveland Heights. 

It was while attending an organ music event in Rochester, N.Y., that he first heard a silent film with live organ accompaniment. “I left thinking, ‘Oh my God, I could do that at my church,’” said Blazer. He began presenting silent classics with his own live accompaniment at the church several times a year. Recently, he and Laurance decided to join forces, combining his series with CSFF. 

Laurance, executive director of CSFF, acquired a taste for films with live music while living in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, and founded CSFF after moving here. 

“We're dedicated to showing high quality silent films, both classics and new films, with the best quality live music possible,” she commented. “We try to match the film with the musician so that it’s something the musician really wants to play and something that we think the audience wants to see with that score.”

While few contemporary moviegoers have watched films with live music, Laurance said CSFF audiences have been pleasantly surprised by the experience—not just by the music, but by the films themselves. 

“People have some pretty set preconceptions about what silent films are,” said Laurance. “They don't necessarily expect them to be sophisticated. They don't expect them to be moving. They don't expect them to be engrossing in the ways that they are. People think of it as a very naive art form, and mistakenly so.”

Blazer has played live for “Steamboat Bill Jr.” once before, but on piano, not organ. His approach is to create a few leitmotifs for the score in advance but mostly to improvise, so every David Blazer performance with a film is one-of-a-kind. 

“One of these days,” he said, “I'm going to get the courage to just say, ‘Send me a film, let me watch it once and then let's do it.’”

On June 21, 5 p.m., Blazer will play piano for the CSFF screening of Harold Lloyd’s 1925 hit comedy “The Freshman” at Cleveland Public Library’s central library downtown. On July 12, 3 p.m., also at the central library, Alexander Fedoriouk will play cimbalom for Erich von Stroheim’s “The Merry Widow,” also from 1925. 

Cleveland Heights native Mike Petrone, the pianist at Johnny’s Downtown for more than 40 years, will play for an upcoming double bill showcasing two shorts: Charlie Chaplin’s comedy “Sunnyside” and a more recent film inspired by Chaplin’s work, “War Story,” a 2001 film from Elyria-based director John Baumgartner. 

For May’s “Steamboat Bill Jr.” showing, Blazer promises a good time for everyone: “Major comedy. Laughing. Hysterical. I've fallen in love with Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton stuff. The audiences really love that.”