For Jeff Rapsis, who has been creating music to accompany silent films for the last 15 years, finding a way to bridge his love for music and silent films was like discovering the combination of peanut butter and chocolate – while each can be enjoyed on its own, they’re better enjoyed together.

“I say to people it’s my therapy,” said Rapsis, who will be providing live accompaniment as part of the first, months-long silent film series at the Greenfield Garden Cinemas, “to sit in public … and create music that touches on the biggest emotions people are supposed to have.”

Rapsis, who grew up studying music but never pursued it professionally, began his endeavor into providing musical accompaniment to silent films after 35 years in journalism, printing and publishing. Though he currently works full-time as the executive director of the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire, he spends his weekends traveling across the country as a silent film accompanist.

“Today, music is created for a movie,” said Rapsis, 59. “But in the 1920s and before, that was not the case. Local musicians would do whatever they could to make a film come to life for the audience.”

The first time Rapsis provided live accompaniment, he had offered to perform at a Halloween screening of the Phantom of the Opera in Manchester, New Hampshire. Though he agreed to do so months in advance, he realized as the date crept up on him that he hadn’t gotten anything together for it except for a few ideas.

“What happened was very surprising to me,” he recalled. “The film started and I started doing music – just improv. After 10 minutes I realized, ‘this is fantastic.’ It was just up to me to make it happen as the move was unfolding. I wasn’t buried in sheet music. I wasn’t worried about the timing of things. That was what made me realize this is what I can do.”

That screening, he said, was his “chocolate and peanut butter moment.”

“I found my microphone,” he said. “I found my voice. I never thought I’d be doing this – I thought music had passed me by.”

Rapsis said he still doesn’t come prepared to screenings with sheet music; rather, using his digital synthesizer – which allows him to reproduce the sound of a full orchestra – he improvises based on the film, the audience and other things happening around him. 

“There’s a spontaneity about improv that provides a real different quality than a prepared score,” he said. “I never know quite what’s going to happen. … You can respond quite effortlessly when things get going.”

Rapsis, who performs roughly 120 shows per year, said comedies are typically the most challenging of the genres to work with. 

“It’s so easy to overdo the music,” he said. “It you come in too strong … it kills the comedy of the film because films are designed for an audience to see. They were never intended to be shown at home or on the internet. It’s the shared laughter that creates the shared experiences of these films.”

Meanwhile, the music he is most comfortable with, he said, is 19th-century symphonic, which naturally fits with most “big dramas.”

“Love, fear, joy – these basic, simple emotions we experience,” he said. 

The Feb. 6 screening of “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog,” a suspenseful drama that tells the story of a hunt for a serial killer in London, will lend itself to some of those emotions. The movie will screen with Rapsis’ accompaniment at 6:30 p.m.

Following “The Lodger,” silent film will return to the Garden on March 6 with the 1927 film, “Wings,” a sweeping drama of U.S. aviators in World War I that won Best Picture at the very first Academy Awards. 

Two additional silent films are expected to be announced, according to Isaac Mass, co-owner of the theater at 361 Main St.

“These films are not primitive,” Rapsis said, speaking to silent films in general. “They’re fully developed works of art … People should forget what they think they know about that era and just come and give it a chance. Come to a theater, watch a picture with a live audience – you’ll see why people enjoyed the experience.” 

Admission is $10.50 for adults, and $8.50 for children, seniors and veterans. Tickets are available online or at the door. The screening is sponsored by Precision Driving School of Greenfield.

Reporter Mary Byrne can be reached at mbyrne@recorder.com or 413-930-4429. Twitter: @MaryEByrne.

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