The Sonic Silents film festival opens Thursday at Portland’s Hollywood Theatre. Film composer and multi-instrumentalist Mark Orton recruited over 20 musicians to compose new, original scores for a curated selection of silent films at the inaugural festival that he created.
Orton and his fellow musicians will perform the new compositions live in front of audiences inside the 100-year-old theater.
Among the highlights is Buster Keaton’s “The General,” which was filmed in Cottage Grove in 1926. For the film’s and the theater’s centennial anniversary, Orton will premiere an updated score he wrote for the 90th anniversary of “The General.”
Todd Sickafoose, a Eugene-based Tony and Grammy Award-winning producer, composer and bassist, will join Orton on stage for the weekend performances. Sickafoose has also contributed an original score for “Daisy Doodad’s Dial,” a 1914 comedy short showing at the festival.
Orton and Sickafoose join us for a preview of Sonic Silents.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Sonic Silents Film Festival opens on Thursday at the Hollywood Theatre in Portland. It’s three nights of silent films that’ll be screened with new original scores played live by Northwest musicians. Among the highlights, Buster Keaton’s “The General,” which was filmed in Cottage Grove in 1926. It’s the same year the Hollywood Theatre opened. So both of them are celebrating their 100 year anniversaries.
Mark Orton is a Portland-based film composer and multi-instrumentalist who recruited over 20 musicians for this inaugural festival. Todd Sickafoose is one of them. He is a Eugene-based Tony and Grammy Award-winning producer, composer and bassist. He also wrote an original score for one of the films. Both of them join me now. Mark and Todd, welcome to the show.
Mark Orton: Thanks for having us.
Todd Sickafoose: Thanks so much.
Miller: Mark first, welcome back. The last time you were on, we talked about a score you’d written for a new movie, with sound and dialogue. We’re talking about something very different here. How did you first get into writing or playing music for silent movies?
Orton: Honestly, that’s my entrance into film altogether. When I was back in college … I continue to this day to be a concert composer, so I’m writing new classical music, avant-garde stuff, and came up at a time when there were some fantastic filmmakers at Wesleyan University. They were making real experimental modern silent film, weird puppet animation kind of stuff. So actually the first scoring gigs that I did were for these like small fine art films.
Miller: I imagine that’s unusual for people who were born in the second half of the 20th century to have gone on to careers making music for Hollywood movies, that your first music for movies was silent movies?
Orton: I came in a side door to film anyway because I had a group that was getting licensed. Its music was being used in films, music from our records. So it wasn’t that I poured coffee for John Williams as an assistant and kind of worked my way up the Hollywood ladder. So yeah, that’s how it came about. That music that I was making back with my first group, Tin Hat Trio, had a common feel with some of the odd Eastern European animation stuff. That’s how we got into it.
Miller: Todd, what about you? As I mentioned, you’ve won a Tony and a Grammy. You’ve toured the country as a musician. Have you ever composed music for a silent film before?
Sickafoose: No. My first introduction to this world was playing Mark’s score to “The General” 10 years ago when it’s the 90th anniversary.
Miller: So why did you say yes when Mark said, “hey, will you compose something for a movie for this festival?”
Sickafoose: Part of the answer to that is just that I’ll say yes to Mark for anything because he’s asking great questions all the time. But I think that it’s so interesting to work across generations like this. I was trying to do the math just then. I think that this woman who led this film that I scored, that’s eight or nine minutes long, could have been my great grandmother.
There’s so many types of collaboration that require both people, at least, to be alive at the same time. And this is not one of them. This film was made in 1917. And the technology that we’re using to play along with it, basically, we could have done then. But it’s across this span of time. That’s really interesting.
Miller: It’s interesting, the last part you mentioned seems worth digging into because you could absolutely make music in 2026 for a movie, using technology that would be essentially unrecognizable to somebody in 1917. All kinds of digital instruments, manipulation, post-production stuff. Did you make the conscious choice to stick with understandable old instruments because you’re working with an old film?
Sickafoose: Well, no. You’re right in pointing this out. Because the spectrum of what people use over the course of this coming weekend is going to be broad and like you say, definitely include things that didn’t exist in that decade. But in our case, there are so many sounds … A lot of my work is with acoustic instruments and we’re constantly finding new ways to make these, sometimes ancient instruments, feel as relevant as they ever have. I think that’s where we’re coming from with this instrumentation that we’re using for these pieces.
Miller: Speaking of instruments … Mark, you brought a couple with you, including a Dobro, a kind of guitar. What should we all know about Dobros?
Orton: Dobro is really the brand name, but it’s also its name now as well. It’s a lap guitar. Rather than having like a wooden soundboard that resonates the strings, it has a metal cone underneath the surface of it. National guitars are the same way. So it has a particular frequency range because of that. The kind I play, I play in my lap. It’s called a square neck. You can’t finger chords on it with your left hand. You use a bar instead.
To Todd’s point, we are using a lot of these classic instruments, things that do go back to the era when these films were made or before. But at the same time,we are using a lot of extended techniques to bring them into the future and to expand the sonic palette. That’s something, very much, that I do on the Dobro. I use a magnet in my right hand a lot of the time. So rather than plucking the strings, I’m exciting it with the magnet. It’s called an EBow and it gives it a bow sound or kind of a theremin sound.
Miller: Can we hear a little bit of that?
Orton: So the kinda standard sound that people would recognize. [plucks Dobro] But if I’m using the EBow, one other nice thing is I get sustain out of it, so I can be lyrical. [plays Dobro with EBow]
Miller: Oh, very theremin-ey.
Orton: Yeah. So I can play lyrical melodies, and all the instruments I play, they sound and fade – guitars, piano, percussion. It’s nice to have a few options that don’t.
Miller: So let’s have a listen to one of the recorded songs from your score for “The General,” that features a Dobro, among other instruments. Let’s have a listen:
[A portion of the score from “The General” with percussion, Dobro and guitar music plays]
Miller: Is it fair to say that one of the big approaches to the way you’re making music for a film here is in orchestration? You have a theme and then you have this whole range of instruments, and you’re looking for the right tonal feel, the right vibe for the scene?
Orton: Yeah, I think that’s fair to say. It is very different than scoring a contemporary film. You hinted at this in the beginning. But you’re not staying out of the way of dialogue. You’re not staying out of the way of whoever’s firing a laser gun or whatever natural sounds are in the film. You’re creating the entire sonic landscape. So that also plays into that idea of extended techniques and also using some of the instruments as, essentially, Foley.
Sickafoose: Foley is sound effects.
Orton: Yeah, like sound effects. It’s one of the reasons that these particular 20-some musicians are gathered, because all of them are composers.
They share one thing even if they’re playing different instruments, different genres, but they’re all improvisers. They’re all people who are as comfortable playing music that’s on the page as off the page. And in that sense, they’re able to interact with the film. Back to this idea of Foley, like the percussionist, I can just simply write a graphic score where I’m saying, “look for that cannon shot and then look for when the train falls off the rails,” and they can be somewhat improvised. It’s a very fun role when you get to do that stuff.
Miller: I was wondering about that. So the score is both written out, where you have certain melodies played by certain people at certain times, but there’s also some freedom built in and some improv?
Orton: That’s also a logistical concern because we’re not doing like what you would see with the Oregon Symphony. If they’re doing like a “Harry Potter” score, where there is a click track, there’s a pulse being kept by a conductor. And you never deviate from that.
Miller: A metronome that we can’t hear, but somebody can to make sure that everything is exactly where it needs to be. And you don’t have that?
Orton: No, we don’t. Although I’d like to think that when we need to be exacting we are. But that kind of flexibility and give and take with the film is really exciting for us.
Miller: Todd, you mentioned the movie that you have been doing music for – at least the woman who made it a long time ago – and your inability to have an actual conversation with her. A different kind of collaboration. But we haven’t heard about the film itself yet. What is this movie?
Sickafoose: The character’s name is Daisy Doodad, and this director plays this character herself and directs the film. In the film, they call it face pulling, but she’s entered a contest to make faces. A number of things happened to keep her from actually making it to this competition. Meanwhile, her husband, on a whim, enters the same competition. He doesn’t seem to have the same skills in this department that she does, but somehow he wins the contest. This really infuriates her, and leads to her getting arrested and all sorts of hijinks that can happen in eight or nine minutes.
Miller: So as somebody who is new to this process of making music for a silent film, what has your own process been like?
Sickafoose: Well, as soon as I saw this film, I thought the number one thing that needs to happen to match the tone of it, is that the musicians need to be having kind of a riotous time themselves. We happen to have a couple of musicians playing with us, in particular Carla Kihlstedt, a violinist, and Jenny Scheinman, a violinist, two women who I think maybe in personality share a little bit in common with this woman who made this crazy film. So one of the things I thought to do is to have them latch on to this character. So some of the writing sets them loose to participate in some of the craziness that this character is happening. I think that will have the result that we’re having just as much of a good time as the people who were making this film.
Miller: Does that mean, like the way Mark was talking about with a percussionist, that you’re expecting your performers to be looking at the movie as they play?
Sickafoose: That’s right. That’s the one thing that is important for us, is to be able to see the screen, so that we can play along with it.
Miller: Mark, can you show us another of the instruments you brought here that are a part of your scoring?
Orton: Yeah, I can. So this one actually gets into … “The General” itself, the film, like you said, it’s shot in Cottage Grove. So when you’re looking at the scenery going by, it’s Willamette Valley essentially. But the film itself takes place in the South, in the Civil War. It’s a kind of funny disconnect, especially for Oregonians. So some of the instrumentation I’m using in this thing is harkening back to the Civil War. Some of it may be more from the age of silent film. But an instrument like this, this is a minstrel show banjo. So it’s gut strung, It has no frets. Which means I can do a lot more with pitch, get into some interesting tuning stuff. In some ways it sorta gets back to the instrument’s African roots more. It has a kind of ancient sound to it too, in this really cool way. So this is still a banjo, but it’s a different take on that.
Miller: Can we hear a little bit of it?
Orton: Sure.
[Orton plays the minstrel show banjo]
Miller: There’s one more instrument behind you that I’d love to hear. I mean, what’s more fun than show and tell with actual instruments and somebody who can play them beautifully? What is behind you?
Orton: This instrument is a funny sort of … People would see it as maybe an autoharp. But instead of you strumming with your right hand, it has these metal tines that come down and bounce on the strings. It’s called a marxophone. It’s a door to door, early 20th century, that came with a little numbered booklet and tuning system you could use with it and play melodies.
Miller: And sold door to door?
Orton: Sold door to door, yeah. So they don’t necessarily stand the test of time. Not musically speaking, but physically. I had to buy three of them to get one that worked real well and kind of cobble it together.
Miller: Why did you want it? Do you mind getting it in your lap as you answer that question?
Orton: Hopefully, just a few notes on it will tell folks why I wanted it. But in the case of this thing, what’s nice about it, it can have a kind of zither-like quality, cimbalom-like, something kind of Eastern Europe. But it can also sound just like a saloon piano. It has a little bit of a tack piano sound to it. It’s just a beautiful tone and interesting sound.
[Orton plays the marxophone]
Miller: The second night’s program is called “Surreal Paris and the Insectarium.” What can folks expect?
Orton: This is getting back to the early days, for me, with silent film. I had this group Tin Hat Trio. The violinist from that group, Carla Kihlstedt is here. Todd also worked with us back in the day. We were San Francisco Bay Area-based, and we toured with these Russian animations. It’s Władysław Starewicz who’s considered really one of the inventors of stop-motion animation, and there’s a funny story behind it.
He was this eccentric entomologist that was trying to make what would have been the first insect documentaries. But the arc lights, these really bright lights of early cinema, kept cooking and killing the subjects. So he went with, like, this is necessity becoming an invention for him, and learned to animate them. Then, at the same time, build little costumes, then took it a step further, built instruments, weapons. He gets into all kinds of crazy tableaus using, basically, insect skeletons that have been animated.
Miller: So a scientist was really truly in the end an artist at heart?
Orton: Definitely.
Miller: Hence the weapons and animation?
Orton: He does make his way up the food chain. And to be honest with you, they get more and more disturbing as they go.
Miller: Fodder for future film festivals?
Orton: Yeah, right.
Miller: Todd, before we go, I’m just curious. What is the Hollywood like as a place to play live music? This is a place where people go to see movies for the most part, along with other events sometimes. But what’s it like as a performance space for live instruments?
Sickafoose: Well, my memory is that it’s perfect for this. It’s been 10 years since we did this, and I’m looking forward to the experience this weekend and having everybody there. But my memory is that it’s ideal for this kind of event. I mean, Mark can speak to that more.
Miller: Mark, briefly?
Orton: I’ll just say that it’s how the theater started. So 100 years ago, when it opened in 1926, there were orchestras in there playing along with silent films. So that’s one of the reasons I really wanted to do this at the Hollywood, not just the shared centennial, but it has this beautiful history.
Miller: We are gonna go out with more music from your score for “The General.” It’s called “The Disappearing Train.” Mark and Todd, it was a pleasure having you both on. Thanks so much.
Orton: Thanks a lot.
Sickafoose: Thank you.
[“The Disappearing Train” from the score plays, then fades out]
Miller: Mark Orton and Todd Sickafoose are both taking part in the film festival, the silent film festival, that’s at the Hollywood Theatre Thursday, Friday and Sunday evenings in Portland.
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