Synth Dinner Theatre is a collaborative project with keyboardist Andrew Links. It was inspired by the early 20th century tradition of organists accompanying silent films. We thought it would be fun to try with synthesizers, Andrew on keyboards and me playing EWI. We quickly realized that our arsenal of modern synths combined with the thousands of great movies meant endless possibilities. There is usually no planning or discussion beforehand - we just press record and improvise for several hours as we watch.

We would love to perform live for an audience, but current circumstances don’t allow for that. We also want to stream these improvisations live online, but that is tricky with copyrighted material. In that spirit, here is a disclaimer:

“We do not claim copyright in any of the films that we use. We believe that our improvised re-scoring and sharing of individual film scenes provides creative and educational value, and constitutes a fair use of copyrighted material. If you believe material has been used in an unauthorized manner, please contact the poster.”

Since starting this project in fall 2020, we have improvised over scenes from many great movies, including:

The Famous Baron Munchausen

Alien

Nosferatu

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Hereditary

The Shawshank Redemption

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Blade Runner

Blade Runner 2049

Gremlins

Love Actually

Gravity

Our favorite re-scored scenes are on Youtube and Instagram under the name “Synth Dinner Theatre.”

Here are a few of them: