|
|
|
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Click here for large publicity photo.
The Mont Alto Orchestra is a five to seven piece chamber ensemble that recreates the small local orchestras that were popular in America from 1890 through 1930. These orchestras provided music for dancing, for listening, and for accompanying movies in the days before talkies. Mont Alto revives this tradition in recordings and live performances. As the five-piece "Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra" we play for silent films, and as the "Mont Alto Ragtime and Tango Orchestra," adding drums and singer, we play for ragtime and tango tea dances and balls in Colorado.
Mont Alto collects original compositions and orchestrations from the turn of the century through 1930 for its tea dance series, silent film presentations, and concerts. They also present concert-lectures on photoplay music history and practice. Besides a schedule of public events, Mont Alto is available for weddings and receptions in the Denver area, for a romantic mix of ragtime, tangos, salon music, and love themes from the silent cinema.
Mont Alto was formed in Colorado in 1989, and has toured around Colorado as well as to Kansas, New York, Missouri, Ohio, Texas, and California to perform music at venues ranging from elementary schools to Grauman's Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.
Rodney Sauer is a 2001 recipient of a Music Fellowship from the Arts and Humanities Assembly of Boulder.
Contact Mont Alto:
Rodney Sauer
The Mont Alto Orchestra
401 Spruce Street
Louisville, CO 80027-1943
E-mail: rodney@mont-alto.com
The orchestra was formed as "The Mont Alto Ragtime and Tango Orchestra" in 1989 to play dance and salon music of the teens. The Motion Picture Orchestra, a subset of the larger group, started scoring silent films in 1994, after discovering the music collection of Al Layton, a theater music director in Colorado in the 1920s. The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra accompanies silent films in authentic period style, using original photoplay music. Tight ensemble playing and appropriate music selection bring the films to life.
The large sound of Mont Alto belies its small, portable size. The Motion Picture Orchestra is a quintet of piano, violin, cello, clarinet, and cornet. The Ragtime and Tango Orchestra adds vocalist Susan Rogers and drummer Chris Kermiet.
Mont Alto has performed film scores at venues ranging from elementary schools to the Denver International Film Festival, and has appeared as "guest artist" with the Longmont Symphony Orchestra. Mont Alto has presented film scores at the Rafael Theater in San Rafael, California, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Topeka Kansas Silent Film Festival, the Chautauqua Silent Film Festival in Boulder, Colorado, and at the Buster Keaton Festival in Iola, Kansas. In September 2000, Mont Alto was featured at the Cinecon Convention, at the renovated Egyptian Theater in Hollywood to present their scores to Beau Geste and Johanna Enlists. In 2002 Mont Alto presented a premiere score for The Wonderful Lie of Nina Petrovna at the Telluride Film Festival. Their work has been covered on the radio and in newspapers ranging from the Iola Register to the New York Times.
Mont Alto's repertoire includes several thousand orchestrations photocopied from the surviving collections of four silent film theater music directors.
Mont Alto records scores for VHS and DVD releases of silent films in collaboration with David Shepard of Film Preservation Associates and Dennis Doros of Milestone Video. These have been very well received, and are considered some of the finest modern recorded silent film scores.
The members of Mont Alto are all experienced professional musicians who are never happier than when working in a small chamber group.
Rodney Sauer, pianist and score compiler, studied at the Oberlin Conservatory and has appeared as soloist with the Boulder Sinfonia. He has been studying silent film music, and his article on the history and use of "photoplay music" was published in the American Music Research Center Journal. He is a frequent performer in various dance genres from early American ballroom dance to folk dance, and plays solo silent film scores, although the Mont Alto Orchestra is his major musical endeavor. In 2001 he won a Musical grant from the Arts and Humanities Assembly of Boulder.
Violinist Britt Swenson received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Juilliard School in New York. A frequent performer, she has soloed at Carnegie Hall with the New York Pops Orchestra as well as giving numerous recitals including one at Carnegie's Weill Hall to benefit the Northern Lights Organization Children's Fund which benefits children born with HIV and AIDS. Britt has been heard on NPR's Music from the Grand Teton Music Festival where she performed with Lionel Party, harpsichordist from the New York Philharmonic. She has also collaborated with performers such as Robert McDuffie and Jonathan Feldman. Swenson is the featured soloist on a CD of Vivaldi's Four Seasons which she recorded with the Bismarck Symphony. Britt also gave a concert spearheading the campaign to save the City Auditorium in her hometown of Bismarck, ND. She has been a teaching fellow at Harvard University and the Juilliard School. Her teachers have included Cho Liang Lin, Sally Thomas, Stephen Clapp, and Bayla Keyes.
David Short, cello, received his Bachelor’s in Music from Ithaca college in upstate New York. He moved to Colorado to pursue a Master’s degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder, but left the program to work on other projects. David is a performer and member of the artistic board for the Telling Stories concert series, recently voted “Best High Culture for the Cool Crowd” in the Westword newspaper. He has recorded several projects around Colorado, including the documentary “The Greatest Good” and Denver Center Theater’s production of “Plainsong.” A member of the Fort Collins and Cheyenne Symphonies, David performs regularly up and down the Front Range, also substituting with the Boulder Philharmonic, Greeley Philharmonic and Longmont Symphony.
Brian Collins is principal clarinetist with the Longmont Symphony Orchestra, and performs with the Colorado Mahler Festival.
Dawn Kramer, trumpet, graduated from the University of Colorado, and plays with a number of Colorado dance, latin, and jazz bands. She is a teacher at the Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts, and has toured world-wide in various genres.
The Colorado and Northwestern, a narrow-gauge railroad that lead from Boulder to the mountain communities of Ward and Eldora, was running into difficulty as the gold mines began to play out. Retooling itself as a tourist route, and calling itself "The Switzerland Trail of America," the small railroad built a dance pavilion at Mont Alto park in 1898. On the day it opened, the city of Boulder closed for business so that all of the citizens could picnic, gather flowers, and dance the night away. In the spirit of adapting life to suit dancing, the Mont Alto Ragtime and Tango Orchestra was named in 1990.
The Mont Alto pavilion is no longer standing, but the park site is still accessible on the railway grade, and the foundations and chimney of the pavilion remain. The Mont Alto Ragtime and Tango Orchestra occasionally plays for "birthday parties" for the pavilion on the site, including on its centenary in 1998.
The Mont Alto Orchestra loves to tour and present films and concerts of photoplay music. We currently have compiled film scores for the following films. and we add several new films each year. If you plan to invite Mont Alto to present a film, keep in mind that the projection capabilities of the venue may restrict which films can be shown for several reasons:
Please feel free to email me with questions about the films, or to ask for recommendations for your particular venue, event, and audience.
Amarilly of Clothesline Alley (1918) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Assunta Spina (1915) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
The Battle of the Sexes (1928) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Battling Butler (1926)
Beau Geste (1926)
Bed and Sofa (1926) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Beggars of Life (1928)
Behind the Scenes (1914)
The Black Pirate (1925)
Blood and Sand (1922) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
The Blue Bird (1918) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
The Cameraman (1929)
The Cameraman's Revenge (1912)
The Cheat (1915)
Chicago (1927)
Cobra (1925) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
College (1927)
The Cook (1916)
Delicious Little Devil (1919) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Destiny (Der Müde Tod) (1921) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Don't Change Your Wife (1919) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)
The General (1927) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
The Italian (1915)
Johanna Enlists (1918)
He Did and He Didn't (1916) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
The Kid Brother (1927)
Leap Year (1921) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Limousine Love (1928)
Long Fliv the King (1926) (upcoming from Milestone Films)
The Magic Clock (1926)
The Mark of Zorro (1920) (upcoming from Mont Alto Private Reserve)
The Marriage Circle (1924) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Mickey (1916/1918)
Mighty Like a Moose (1926) (upcoming from Milestone Films)
Miss Lulu Bett (1920) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
The Navigator (1924)
The New York Hat (1912)
People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag, 1929)
Peter Pan (1925)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
Quality Street (1927)
Rosita (1923)
The Saphead (1920)
Sherlock Jr. (1924)
The Silent Enemy (1929)
Spite Marriage (1929)
Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)
Suds (1920) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
Sunrise (1927)
Teddy at the Throttle (1917)
The Thief of Bagdad (1924) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
The Three Ages (1923)
True Heart Susie (1919) (on DVD from Image Entertainment)
The Waiter's Ball (1916) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
What Price Goofy? (1925) (upcoming from Milestone Films)
The Whirl of Life (1915)
Why Change Your Wife? (1920) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
The Wishing Ring (1914) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
A Woman of Paris (1923)
The Whispering Chorus (1918) (on DVD with Mont Alto's score)
You're Darn Tootin' (1928)
