KUNC
Orchestra members Rodney Sauer (left), Britt Swenson (front) and David Short (right) rehearse music for the screening of “All Quiet on the Western Front” as the silent film runs on a screen on the wall. The musicians synchronize the music to the action in the film.
Since the early 1990s, the five-member Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra has been setting the musical scene for silent films in Colorado and across the country.
“I came across a large collection of
silent film music at the University of Colorado that had just been donated there, and started looking through it and realized that there was this whole repertoire of music that had been used in silent film orchestras,” said Rodney Sauer, founder of the Louisville-based orchestra. “It had pretty much been ignored since 1929.”