Jim Riggs Bio

"Phantom" Organist is Silent Movie Maven

When Jim Riggs takes his place at the Oakland Paramount's Mighty Wurlitzer on Halloween night to play his original score to the 1925 classic silent film "The Phantom Of The Opera", audience members will experience a musical treat that only a handful of organists worldwide can provide. Perhaps twenty theatre organists travel around the world giving recitals. Riggs is one of only a half-dozen or so of that number who specialize in providing musical scores to the best of silent cinema.

From Palo Alto's Stanford Theater to the wilds of northwestern Pennsylvania to Manchester, England to Perth, Australia, Riggs's organ scores breathe musical life into the silent shadows of the silver screen. For a record ten months in 2000-2001, he presented weekly silent film programs at the Bay Theater in Seal Beach, CA on the huge Wurlitzer pipe organ installed there (now since removed). Many rarely seen silents--- some studio vault prints---were shown, including "Nosferatu". D. W. Griffith's "Intolerance", "Metropolis" and Garbo's "Flesh And The Devil". Notable among them was the 1926 MGM picture, "Tell It To The Marines" starring the great Lon Chaney, produced only one year after he made his most famous picture, "The Phantom Of The Opera" for Universal Pictures.

For the "Phantom..." screening at Oakland's Paramount Theater on Halloween night, Riggs plans to use his favorite method for constructing a silent movie score: the prepared improvisation. In his own words: "The key to this approach is to know the film very well; where the shocks are, when someone gets slapped or when particular dramatic moments occur. I then compose a short theme or motif for each major character in the film. Sometimes major scenes get their own themes as well, like the infamous unmasking sequence in "Phantom". Having armed myself thematically and having detailed knowledge of how the film's narrative unfolds, I can then weave a score during the performance that is both completely fresh and cohesive. It's like the images come into my eyes, they trigger the already prepared musical themes, and the music just flows out of my fingers onto the keyboard. It's a very in-the-moment, Zen sort of thing for me. I just love it."

Audiences can enjoy Jim Riggs's live Wurlitzer pipe organ score to 1925's "The Phantom Of The Opera" the the Paramount Theater in Oakland on Halloween night, October 31, at 8:00pm. The film will be presented as part of the Paramount's Movie Classics Series. Please go to www.paramounttheater.com for ticket and schedule information.