Phillip Johnston:
New Music for Silent Films
Phillip Johnston’s first live performance of an original score for historical silent film was commissioned by the American Museum of the Moving Image, and premiered at the Silent Movies: Loud Music festival on 19 Sep 1993. That film, Tod Browning’s The Unknown (1927), starring Lon Chaney and the then 19-year-old Joan Crawford, with Johnston’s score, began a 30+-year body of work, including multiple feature films, numerous short films, and related multimedia works (such as Wordless! [2013] with Art Spiegelman).
The most important of these works, aside from The Unknown, are The Merry Frolics of Méliès (1899-1907), a collection of eight short films including the iconic “Trip to the Moon”; Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Japanese Expressionist masterpiece Page of Madness (1926); F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1926), and Lotte Reiniger’s silent silhouette animation The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). In addition to the 12 works that combine comics/comix and music in Wordless!, recent works include comics He Done Her Wrong (Gross, 1930), Big Head Pointy Nose (Pratap, 2022) and Buster Keaton’s short film masterpiece, and Cops (1922).
Over the last three decades, he has performed these works widely in the US, Europe and Australia, at cinematheques, film and music festivals, universities and local movie houses. Australian venues include The Sydney Film Festival, Sydney Opera House, Sydney Vivid, Melbourne Festival of the Arts, MONA FOMA, Woodford Folk Festival, Revelation Perth Film Festival, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, National Film and Sound Archive and Melbourne International Jazz Festival. (list of US and international venues upon request).
In 2015, he completed a PhD in Music Composition at the Newcastle Conservatorium, University of Newcastle, with the thesis title: ‘The Polysynchronous Film Score: The Relationship Between Music and Image/Narrative In Contemporary Scores For Silent Film’. He expanded these ideas in his book Silent Films/Loud Music: New Ways of Listening to and Thinking about Silent Film Music (Bloomsbury, 2021; paperback published in 2023).
His work has been commissioned by the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Film Society of Lincoln Centre and the Sydney Opera House. His career as a composer of music for sound films includes, Philip Haas’ The Music of Chance (1993), Paul Mazursky’s Faithful (1996) and Henry Bean’s Noise (2008). He has taught music composition for film for the last 25 years at NYU, AFTRS, University of Sydney, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and the Australian Institute of Music, among others.
In 2018, he was awarded the Johnny Dennis Award for Film Music Composition ($20,000).
His new current project is Puffs of Smoke: Weird and Wild Artifacts from the Early Era of Australian Silent Film, a study of short works, with original music performed live by the composer on solo saxophone, with electronic and pre-recorded accompaniment.
Phillip Johnston: New Music for Silent Films: list of performances.
The Unknown (Browning, 1927)
19 Sep 1993 The American Museum of the Moving Image, NYC (premiere)
1 Oct 1993 Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
9 May 1994 Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, Philadelphia, PA
30 Oct 1994 Teatro Verdi, Rome, ITALY
23 Feb 1996 Demarest School, Hoboken, NJ
21 Jun 1996 Mellon Jazz Festival, Philadelphia, PA
6 Aug 1998 Celebrate Brooklyn Festival, Brooklyn, NY
26 Jan 1999 World Financial Center, NYC
28 Aug 1999 Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA
22 Oct 2000 American Museum of the Moving Image, Lon Chaney Festival, NYC
11 Jan 2001 Avoca Beach Picture Theatre, Avoca Beach, NSW, AUSTRALIA
14 Jan 2001 Fox Studios, Fringe Festival, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
21 Jan 2001 Uniting Church, Fringe Festival, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
26 Jan 2001 Big Day Out, Homebush Bay, NSW, AUSTRALIA
27 Oct 2001 Virginia Film Festival, Charlottesville, VA
The Georges Méliès Project (8 films, Méliès,1899-1907)
15 Nov 1997 Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC (premiere)
20,21 Feb 1998 Demarest School, Hoboken, NJ
28 Mar 1998 Teatro Verdi, Florence, ITALY
10 Oct 1998 Time & Space Limited, Hudson, NY
19 May 1999 Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH
20 May 1999 Wexner Center, Columbus, OH
6 Oct 2000 Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA
7 Oct 2000 EdgeFest, Kerrytown Concert House, Ann Arbor, MI
8 Oct 2000 Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
8 Mar 2006 EtnaFest, Catania, ITALY
22 Aug 2010 Screen Live, Sydney Opera House, Sydney AUSTRALIA
15 April 2012 Parramatta Riverside, Sydney AUSTRALIA
12 May 2012 Randwick Town Hall, Sydney AUSTRALIA
08 July 2012 Revelation Perth Film Festival AUSTRALIA
07 Sept 2012 Avoca Beach Picture Theatre AUSTRALIA
12 June 2016 Penn Museum, USA (Relache)
30 Dec 2016 Woodford Folk Festival, QLD AUSTRALIA
13 July 2019 La Perouse Museum, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
21 Oct 2022 Melbourne International Jazz Festival
(Darebin Arts Centre) AUSTRALIA
Page of Madness (Kinugasa, 1926)
9, 10 July 1998 Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC (premiere) USA
5 Mar 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA USA
23 Jan 1999 Duke University, NC USA
26 Aug 2000 Time & Space Limited, Hudson, NY USA
22 June 2008 State Theatre, Sydney Film Festival, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
Faust (Murnau, 1926)
05 Oct 2002 New York Film Festival, Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, NYC, USA (premiere)
26 Jan 2003 Teatro Manzoni, Apertivo in Concerti, Milan, ITALY
06 Feb 2003 Mass MoCA, Massachusetts, USA
07 Mar 2004 The University of the South, Sewanee, TN, USA
11 Jun 2004 Slovenska kinoteka, Ljubljana, SLOVENIA
12 Jun 2004 UBI Jazz Festival, Venice ITALY
13 Jun 2004 La Palma, Rome ITALY
16 Jun 2004 Brugge, BELGIUM
17 Jun 2004 Antwerp, BELGIUM
11 Dec 2004 Merkin Hall, New York USA
20 Jun 2005 Garda Jazz Festival, Lake Garda Jazz, ITALY
21 Jun 2005 Roma Jazz & Image Festival, Rome ITALY
22 Jun 2005 Cinemazero, Pordenone ITALY
23 Jun 2005 Rote Fabrik, Zurich SWITZERLAND
10 Sep 2007 German Film Festival, Seymour Centre, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
10 Oct 2008 ACMI, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA [Melbourne Int’l Festival of the Arts]
11 Oct 2008 ACMI, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA [Melbourne Int’l Festival of the Arts]
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Reiniger, 1926)
17 May 2013 Randwick Town Hall, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
15 Sep 2013 Parramatta Riverside, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
07 Jun 2014 Sydney Vivid Festival Sydney, Australia
17 Jan 2015 MONA FOMA, Hobart, Tasmania, AUSTRALIA
07 Jun 2015 The Capital Jazz Project, Canberra, AUSTRALIA
25 June 2016 Springwood, New South Wales AUSTRALIA
28, 29 Dec 2016 Woodford Folk Festival, QLD AUSTRALIA
26 Sep 2020 Chauvel Cinema/Goethe Institut. AUSTRALIA
27 Sep 2020 Chauvel Cinema/Goethe Institut. AUSTRALIA
02 Oct 2020 NFSA (National Film & Sound Archive), Canberra. AUSTRALIA.
20 Jan 2021 Bangalow Film Festival, Bangalow, NSW AUSTRALIA
26 Feb 2021 Fed Square/ACMI, Melbourne, VIC, AUSTRALIA
Wordless! (with Art Spiegelman, 2013)*
05 Oct 2013 Graphic Festival, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
18 Jan 2014 Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, USA
22 Jan 2014 Colorado College, Colorado Springs, USA
24 Jan 2014 University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
08 Oct 2014 Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, USA
10 Oct 2014 UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA
12 Oct 2014 Seattle, WA, USA
14 Oct 2014 USC, Los Angeles, CA, USA
15 Oct 2014 UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
17 Oct 2014 USCSB, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
19 Oct 2014 Kaufman Center, Kansas City, MO, USA
21 Oct 2014 Lisner Auditorium, George Washington University, Washington DC, USA
26 Oct 2014 Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, USA
13 Mar 2015 Miller Theatre, Columbia University, NYC, USA
10 Mar 2015 Williams College, Williams MA, USA
20 Sep 2015 Comicópolis, Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA
11 Nov 2016 London Jazz Festival, Barbican Centre, London UK
17 June 2018 Philharmonie de Paris, Paris FRANCE
Silent Shorts (3 films)
He Done her Wrong (Gross, 1930)*,
Cops (Keaton/Cline, 1922),
Trip to the Moon (Méliès, 1902)
02 Dec 2022 Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI)/Federation Square, Melbourne, AUSTRALIA
