Alloy Orchestra

Since its first performance on December 31, 1991, in Boston, the Alloy Orchestra has developed an extensive repertoire of music and sounds that it performed during the projection of silent films. Its three musicians used an array of found objects and electronics as well as traditional percussion, wind and keyboard instruments.[2] Three years later, the trio released New Music for Silent Films through Accurate Records.[3] It was followed in 1995 by the album Lonesome, which appeared through BIB Records.[4] The collection Silents from 1997 brought together the contemporary scores for the films Plain Crazy, The Lost World, Nosferatu, Metropolis, and The Unknown.[5]

The ensemble performed at film festivals and a variety of cultural events worldwide, including:Film Society of Lincoln Center, Telluride Film Festival, National Gallery of Art, AFI Silver, Maryland Film Festival, Cornell Cinema, Hamilton College, San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Pordenone Silent Film Festival, The Louvre, New Zealand International Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, Mass Moca and many others. They also performed on tour throughout the United States at local movie houses, such as Boston's Somerville Theater, The Coolidge Corner, Rag Tag Cinema, The Englert Theatre and many others.[2] The trio revised their scores as better and more integral prints of films become available. For instance, they performed a new score to accompany the recently restored version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis at the TCM Classic Movie Festival in April 2010.[6]

Alloy also worked in collaboration with film archivists and collectors, such as: Film Preservation Associates, Lobster Films, George Eastman House and the British Film Institute, Harold Lloyd Estate, Douris Films, Munich Film Archive, Lumiere Institutet present audiences with the very best available prints of some of history's greatest films. For example, Alloy acquired its own new print of Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera from Gosfilmofond. Alloy and wrote its own score based on Vertov's notes for the film’s 1928 premiere.[7]

Alloy has released numerous many DVDs, Blu-rays, and CDs. In 1999 they released Masters of Slapstick, which presented music for One Week, Big Business, and Easy Street.[8] In the same year, Entertainment Weekly put the ensemble on its list of the 100 most creative people or groupings in the entertainment world. Terry Gross on National Public Radio called the trio "one of the pioneers in composing new music for old movies" and Lloyd Schwartz discussed their recording of scores to a pair of Buster Keaton films: "Most silent movie music just fills the void. Some of it even gets in the way. But the Alloy Orchestra really helps us see what we're watching and often the music, whether driving or fanciful, is worth listening to on its own."[9]

In addition to their work on silent films, Alloy Orchestra composed music for contemporary films, including Fast, Cheap & Out of Control by Errol Morris, Dragonflies the Baby Cries by Jane Gillooly and Vakvagany by Ben Meade. In 2014 a recording of the music for the film Man with the Movie Camera was released on double vinyl by Third Man Records.[10]

• Independent Film and Video Monthly, vol. 25 (2002), 15ff.
• New York Daily News: Mary Talbot, "Alloy Orchestra's Brand of Heavy Metal," August 9, 1996, accessed June 8, 2010

• eNotes
• Roger Clark Miller