Alloy Orchestra is a three man musical ensemble, writing and performing live accompaniment to classic silent films. Working with an outrageous assemblage of peculiar objects, they thrash and grind soulful music from unlikely sources. Performing at prestigious film festivals and cultural centers in the US and abroad (The Telluride Film Festival, The Louvre, Lincoln Center, The Academy of Motion Pictures, the National Gallery of Art and others), Alloy has helped revive some of the great masterpieces of the silent era. An unusual combination of found percussion and state-of-the-art electronics gives the Orchestra the ability to create any sound imaginable. Utilizing their famous "rack of junk" and electronic synthesizers, the group generates beautiful music in a spectacular variety of styles. They can conjure up a French symphony or a simple German bar band of the 20's. The group can make the audience think it is being attacked by tigers, contacted by radio signals from Mars or swept up in the Russian Revolution.
Alloy collaborates with some of the worlds best archives and collectors (such as the George Eastman House, The British Film Institute, Paramount pictures, Film Preservation Associates and The Douris Corporation) to present audiences with the very best available prints of some of history's greatest film. Now in its 18th year, The Alloy Orchestra began its aural onslaught with an original score for METROPOLIS in 1991. In the intervening years, the group has written scores for 28 feature length film presentations, typically premiering their new scores at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. This fall, 2008, Alloy will be premiering their newest score for THE LAST COMMAND, Josef von Sternberg's Academy Award winning drama. Paramount Pictures has struck a gorgeous new print which we will be using.
In September of 2007, Alloy premiered their new score for the critically acclaimed silent, UNDERWORLD at the New York Film Festival. UNDERWORLD was the first film by renouned director Josef von Sternberg. UNDERWORLD won the first ever Academy Award for "best writing" (now called best original screenplay) in 1927. Largely unseen for decades, Paramount Pictures struck a gorgeous new print for Alloy's use.