Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra
The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra is a chamber orchestra that accompanies silent films, using the techniques and repertoire of the original silent film orchestras. Mont Alto has appeared at theaters and film festivals across America, and is frequently heard accompanying silent films on the Turner Classic Movies channel. We have scored over 150 films, and recorded over fifty of them.
BEAU GESTE (1926) was the first movie ever scored by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. We rented a battered 16mm print from the New York Museum of Modern Art circulating library in the summer of 1994, and selected appropriate themes for each scene from the collection of the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado. The popularity of that screening sent us on a long, continuing journey discovering, performing, and recording “photoplay music.”
After the retirement of the Library of Congress’ circulating print, Beau Geste has been unavailable in 35mm or any decent digital version for over a dozen years, so it fell out of our active repertoire. But it has always remained one of my favorite silent movies.
This new restoration, combining all of the best surviving material, with its much higher visual quality and corrected running speed, required a major revision of the score. And, as it happens, more historical music from the original run of the film has become available since 1994.
This new score that we are premiering at the 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival is a blend of the best ideas of three different historical scores: the New York Capitol Theatre score compiled by Hugo Riesenfeld in 1926, which is preserved at the Library of Congress; the James Bradford cue sheet score, also from 1926, for which Bradford composed two additional pieces; and Mont Alto’s 1994 score, which despite my inexperience compiling film scores at that point, contained some beautiful and powerful music.
Mont Alto’s five regular musicians are Britt Swenson on violin, Brian Collins on clarinet, Dawn Kramer on trumpet, David Short on cello, and Rodney Sauer on piano. This size of “orchestra” was quite common in small to medium-sized theaters across America.
Beau Geste has an epic scope, and benefits from a larger sound than Mont Alto’s usual quintet. In fact, Hugo Riesenfeld’s Capitol Theatre Orchestra was over ten times the size of the Mont Alto quintet, rivalling symphony orchestras of the time.
For example, Riesenfeld’s overture for the film starts with two trumpets calling back and forth from the stage and the orchestra pit, which obviously requires two trumpet players. So we are joined by Derek McDonald on second trumpet, not just for the overture, but adding power to battle music and dramatic music throughout the score. We invited percussionist Kate Polera to add power to the military and combat scenes, and violist Emily Lewis to add lushness to the romantic themes of brotherly and family love that underlie the film’s central mystery. Finally, we are joined by Nancy Sauer, adding carefully synchronized rifle shot Foley effects.
This new score will be recorded for screening on the TCM channel and home video. But it will never be as exciting as you will experience it here: a world premiere of a new restoration from The Film Preserve and its many collaborators, along with a new historically-informed musical score, at an original 1922 movie palace, with a full and enthusiastic audience of film lovers.
–Rodney Sauer, director of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra