httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUJHgKa9VJ0&feature=c4-overview&list=UUnouYyjQ95buGKVs0-RbdgQ

Here’s another article on the music from the new release, Heaven, with a collaboration with Marnie Breckenridge.  The composition is played and featured in the Uffizi Museum in Florence – quite an honor.  From online music mag  from JamSphere.

Roscoe Conkling “Fatty” Arbuckle (March 24, 1887 — June 29, 1933) was an American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. Starting at the Selig Polyscope Company he eventually moved to Keystone Studios where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd. He mentored Charlie Chaplin and discovered Buster Keaton and Bob Hope.
He was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s, and soon became one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, signing a contract in 1921 with Paramount Pictures for an unprecedented $1 million.
In September 1921, Arbuckle attended a party at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco during the Labor Day weekend. Bit player Virginia Rappe became drunk and ill at the party; she died four days later at a sanitarium known for performing abortions. Arbuckle was accused by a well known madam of raping and accidentally killing Rappe. Arbuckle endured three widely publicized trials for manslaughter. His films were subsequently banned and he was publicly ostracized.
He was acquitted in the third trial and received a written apology from the jury; however, the trial’s scandal has mostly overshadowed his legacy as a pioneering comedian.Though the ban on his films was lifted within a year, Arbuckle only worked sparingly through the 1920s. He was finally able to return to making short two-reel comedies in 1932 for Educational Pictures. He died in his sleep of a heart attack, aged 46, in 1933, reportedly on the same day he signed a contract with Warner Brothers to make a feature film

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL9mbn1zxIg

new score by Thomas Schoenberger, composer

Featuring Angelina Jolie in a video for a song about a ex girlfriend that ends up crazy and homeless.
Not a true story, but just good song writing material……

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM2QyxNRRns

Lyrics by Thomas Schoenberger

I got this new job, I’m working downtown.
I get up early and I fight the traffic all around.
I take the elevator forty stories high
It was my first day, so I got off at 5
I took a walk outside.

As I turned to leave, I saw a bag lady looking at me,
I had to turn away, I recognized her face !

She’s my old flame, I saw her yesterday
She didn’t have a place to stay
She asked me for the time, I gave her my last dime
When I looked at her, there’s something crazy in her eyes…

Well hey hey baby, what happened to you?

I hardly recognize the pretty thing that I once knew…..

You’ve had some hard luck, burned ideep your face,
Those eyes were once so happy, now their staring out into space
I don;t know what to say…

Life has treated you cruel,
What ever happened to the girl that I knew?

The girl who broke my heart, pushing a shopping cart?

She’s my old flame
I saw her yesterday
I didn’t know just what to say

Well she broke my heart in two, and fed me to the wolves, and I guess your karma’s finally catching up to you

No shoes under her feet, that’s my old flame living in the street
It really serves her right, She nearly ruined my life….\

Do you remember baby, how you laughed at me, as I cried for you, how you broke my heart, broke my heart in two..

She’s my old flame…..

Signing off — Thomas Schoenberger

A montage of the best moments of Buster Keaton’s amazing stunts and pratfalls scored to the music of composer Thomas Schoenberger, with Stu Blank joining as the second pianist. Stu died in 2011 of cancer at age 47.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPXd9xl3fSo

Here’s a bit of background on Stu Blank for those of you who’d like to know more:

http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/LIVELY-ARTS-Farewell-Stu-Blank-2896232.php

Ok – I know I’m stuck on a Buster Keaton thing.  Another new Schoenberger composition accompanies this great piece of work by Keaton.

One of the most hilarious shorts in Buster Keaton’s arsenal of brilliant comedic jewels.Through a series of mistaken identities Buster winds up with a load of furniture in the middle of parade of policemen. An anarchist’s bomb lands in his carriage. After lighting his cigarette with it, he tosses it into the ranks of police. When it explodes the police chase him all over town. Composer Thomas Schoenberger created this original piece of music to enhance the experience of watching Buster as he takes on a city police force. This film was a huge success in the early 1920’s.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cAw4kCp9Ig

Domestic scene leads to an elevator scene that is a blast…off that is…Original soundtrack by Thomas Schoenberger.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9yFhTtLKdE

Keaton’s first film elevator scene, I believe, was in The Bell Boy with Fatty Arbuckle in 1918.

The hat scene from one of Buster Keaton’s most famous films, the 1928 feature Steamboat Bill.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PPscZEDVIc

More from Wikipedia on Keaton:

The film critic David Thomson…described Keaton’s style of comedy: “Buster plainly is a man inclined towards a belief in nothing but mathematics and absurdity … like a number that has always been searching for the right equation. Look at his face — as beautiful but as inhuman as a butterfly — and you see that utter failure to identify sentiment.”^[17] Gilberto Perez describes “Keaton’s genius as an actor to keep a face so nearly deadpan and yet render it, by subtle inflections, so vividly expressive of inner life. His large deep eyes are the most eloquent feature; with merely a stare he can convey a wide range of emotions, from longing to mistrust, from puzzlement to sorrow.”^[18] Keaton even inspired full academic study.^[19]

So, I’ve been having some fun lately composing new scores for Buster Keaton classics.  If you’re a fan of the silent film era, no introduction is needed – you are well aware of Keaton’s impeccable timing, intelligent parodies and deadpan face while surviving and thriving in all sorts of situations from love affairs to disasters.  But for those of you who’ve only heard of Chaplin – meet another major comedic star with equally brilliant talents. A short video festival on the blog for your viewing pleasure and if you want more here’s a great collection The Art of Buster Keaton (The General / Sherlock, Jr. / Our Hospitality / The Navigator / Steamboat Bill Jr. / College / Three Ages / Battling Butler / Go West / The Saphead / Seven Chances / 21 Short Films)

From Wikepedia:
“Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton (October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966) was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer.^[1] He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistentlystoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname “The Great Stone Face”.^[2]

Buster Keaton (his lifelong stage name) was recognized as the seventh-greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.^[3] In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Keaton the 21st-greatest male star of all time. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of Keaton’s “extraordinary period from 1920 to 1929, [when] he worked without interruption on a series of films that make him, arguably, the greatest actor-director in the history of the movies…”^[2]

Orson Welles stated that Keaton’s The General is “the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made.”^[4] A 2002 worldwide poll by Sight & Sound ranked Keaton’s The General as the 15th best film of all time. Three other Keaton films received votes in the magazine’s survey: Our Hospitality, Sherlock, Jr., and The Navigator.^[5]”

In this famous short, we find the Tramp competing for the affections of a beautiful woman.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFBlg8cgqtI

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WOdMd3G_e8

I composed this new soundtrack with an ear toward partnering and supporting the film in the authentic style of the era.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXcStnQXwlY