Classic Film Scores Performed Live by The Cleveland Orchestra and Organist Todd Wilson

Lights. Camera. Music. Film buffs will love these upcoming screenings of old movies accompanied by The Cleveland OrchestraRebel Without a Cause (starring James Dean) and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Organist Todd Wilson accompanies Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog.

October 26, 2018: Renowned organist Todd Wilson sets the stage for the first movie in the series lineup: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog. Just in time for Halloween, Wilson improvises music for Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1920 silent thriller about the hunt for a "Jack the Ripper"-like serial killer in London — live on Severance Hall’s grand Norton Memorial Organ.

Trivia Fact: Alfred Hitchcock appears sitting at a desk in the newsroom while operating a telephone with his back to the camera (5:33 minutes into the film) — his first of the film cameos that become a standard practice for the remainder of his films. This first cameo happened purely by circumstance — the actor who was supposed to play the part of the telephone operator failed to show up, and Hitchcock filled the breach. 

March 1, 2019: Travel to the postwar period of the 1950s in the groundbreaking film Rebel Without a Cause. Featuring a score by Leonard Rosenman that is widely considered to have revolutionized film music, Nicholas Ray’s cult-classic about rebellious American youth culture — starring James Dean, Sal Mineo, and Natalie Wood — is a timeless landmark drama. The Cleveland Orchestra accompanies this evening of silver screen magic.

Trivia Fact: Composer Leonard Rosenman was roommates with James Dean and was teaching him to play the piano. It was Dean who suggested director Elia Kazan ask Rosenman to score his film East of Eden, Dean’s first major film. That project led to Rosenman also scoring Rebel Without a Cause.  

April 28, 2019: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a Steven Spielberg sci-fi favorite, concludes the series. Boasting one of the most iconic five-note sequences in movie history, with John Williams’ remarkable musical score and Spielberg’s uncanny eye for direction, Close Encounters of the Third Kind remains one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time. With the added thrill of live music by The Cleveland Orchestra, one couldn’t ask for a better setting to relive the mystery and wonder of this powerful cinematic experience. 

Trivia Fact: The 43-year collaboration of Steven Spielberg and John Williams is a Hollywood legend. Williams has a record fifty Academy Award® nominations and has written the score for more than two dozen Spielberg projects.

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