Metropolis

$10 of each ticket will benefit Wurlitzer restoration. Built by Ohio’s Wurlitzer Organ Company in 1927, PPAC’s Wurlitzer is a true treasure of American mechanical wizardry and a significant instrument in musical history. Approaching its 100th anniversary, planning is underway to re-store the Wurlitzer to its full, original musical capacity, so it may continue to WOW audiences for another 100 years.

By PPAC House Organist, Peter Edwin Krasinski

It is an honor to play METROPOLIS at the Providence Performing Arts Center on the Magnificent 1927 Wurlitzer! I feel particularly excited to share with you the art of accompanying silent film on such an historic organ and in such a spectacular space. When I accompany a film I first visually review and memorize it and consider what musical ideas would work best with the “central line”, the characters, the action, the locations, and the many other details of the film. The difference is that instead of composing the music and blending it with the film during an editing process, the music is improvised live as the movie is playing. This means that every time that I accompany a movie, a unique performance experience takes place that will never happen exactly the same way twice.

With this masterpiece from the silent film era, I will engage the full musical resources of this or-gan to help bring the movie come to life. METROPOLIS (1927) presents a very complex experience for the 21st century viewer. For this reason, the musical accompaniments will be dynamic and complex as well. METROPOLIS is a film with which I have had a long relationship, having first seen it as a child accompanied live by American Theater Organist Lee Irwin and later playing it for the first time at Hammond Castle in Gloucester in the 1980’s. It’s a futuristic vision with a German accent. The Epigram condenses the film’s plot of a worker’s city being oppressed by those that created it clearly enough:

“The mediator between head and hand must be the heart.”

My goal is to convey this “central lines” as though I were narrating this film while at the same time becoming integrated with the presentation. The result is a flexible art-form (the sonic im-provisation) informed by an inflexible art-form (the visual film) to create an organic experience for you, the audience. The art of silent movie accompaniment is a rare but much cherished tradition in the United States, and I am pleased to present this most unique version of it to you.