Buster Keaton's "The General" Comes to Music Mountain with Live Score and Croquet

August 22, croquet and picnic 5pm, film 7pm | Falls Village, CT

Music Mountain screens Buster Keaton's "The General" (1926) at Gordon Hall on August 22 with live accompaniment by pianist Donald Sosin and singer and percussionist Joanna Seaton—a married couple based just up the road in Lakeville who have made a career of scoring silent film.

Keaton's Civil War comedy, in which he plays a train engineer who commandeers a locomotive to rescue both his girlfriend and his beloved engine from Union soldiers, remains one of the most celebrated physical comedies ever made.

Sosin has been scoring silent films since 1971, when a projector showing a Laurel and Hardy short in his University of Michigan dorm room happened to be running while he was playing dinner-party piano nearby—he switched to ragtime on the spot and never really stopped. He became resident film accompanist at the Museum of Modern Art in the late 1970s and has since written, recorded, and performed more than a thousand silent film scores, working from Renaissance dance music to Stravinsky depending on what a given film calls for. He and Seaton, a Manhattan native who was once an Ivory Soap baby in advertisements, perform together at major festivals worldwide and have created scores for more than 65 silent film DVD releases on labels including Criterion, Kino, and Flicker Alley. The San Francisco Silent Film Festival's past president once called Sosin simply "the world's greatest silent film pianist."

The evening opens at 5pm with croquet, conversation, and picnicking on the grounds. Guests are encouraged to dress in 1920s-inspired attire, with costume accessories provided on-site; light non-alcoholic concessions are available for purchase, though attendees are welcome to bring their own food and drink.

Gordon Hall, Music Mountain, 225 Music Mountain Rd., Falls Village, CT. Tickets at ci.ovationtix.com.