Halloweekend Vibes! Organist Brett Miller Brings Silent-Film Double-Feature to Life at Jones Hall

BRETT MILLER WAS just 10 years old when his parents took him to a screening of the 1925 silent film, The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney as “The Phantom” of the Paris Opera House, with an accompanying soundtrack played live by an organist. The film contains one of the most famous “reveals” on celluloid (We won’t give it away!) and is all the more shocking when accompanied by live music played on the Phantom’s favorite instrument.

Watching Phantom, Miller was “transfixed” at how a single musician and instrument could enhance the film’s spooky atmosphere and draw the audience into a dream-like world of romance, obsession, and dread. “I turned to my parents and said, ‘I wanna do that!’” laughs Miller. “They thought they had a crazy kid on their hands.”

Now 22, living in Rochester, NY, and studying orchestral conducting at the Eastman School of Music, Miller has since mastered the art of accompanying silent films on the organ and performs in theaters across the U.S.

Organist Brett Miller

On Friday, Oct. 25, Miller performs at Jones Hall for an especially spooky Halloween silent film double feature: The 1920, post-World War I German expressionist classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; and Miller’s childhood fave, The Phantom of the Opera. The concert is part of the Houston Symphony’s Halloween Frights at the Symphony series, which includes an interactive screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with special guest Patricia Quinn (Oct. 26); and two screenings (Nov. 16 & 17) of Tim Burton’s stop-motion animation classic The Nightmare Before Christmas, with Danny Elfman’s tuneful score played live by the orchestra.

After that life-changing experience with Phantom, Miller approached his neighborhood church’s music director and simply asked if she would teach him how to play the organ. While similar to the piano in that there is a keyboard, Miller quickly discovered the organ is actually a wind instrument, with knobs or “stops” that when pulled release air to a specific set or “rank” of pipes, which each have their own unique timbre. (One rank of pipes might produce a soft, clarinet-like sound, while another a blast of brass you can feel in your guts.) And then there’s the pedal board, which is played with one’s feet.

“We organists are part octopus,” says Miller, who speaks about music-making with both genuine reverence and good humor. “We’re constantly moving.”

No two organs are identical, so when Miller is booked for a performance, he has to wrap his head, arms and feet around a new instrument. (For Friday’s silent-film double-feature, an electronic organ is being brought in and installed for Miller to play.)

When accompanying a silent film, with the screen in full view and without a click track or any other modern synchronization, Miller plays composed passages and stock cues (with titles like “Chase #4”) in combination with in-the-moment improvisations. For The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Miller uses a couple of themes from the original full orchestra score for the film composed by Giuseppe Becce. (Fun fact: In the 1913 silent movie The Life and Works of Richard Wagner, one of the first feature-length biopics, Becce played the title role and wrote the accompanying music.) For Phantom, Miller draws from a partial surviving score, preserved by The American Organ Society, along with excerpts from Charles Gounod’s Faust.

For Miller, one of the most exciting things about accompanying silent films is that each performance is unique and caters to the shifting moods of the viewing audience. “You kind of have to manipulate an audience,” says Miller. “But also know what the audience wants from you.”