The Bijou Players will present Buster Keaton?s silent film classic, ?The General,? with live musical accompaniment, on Sunday, March 2 at the Hoover Community Theater, located on the third floor of the Grundy County-Jewett Norris library.
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The Bijou Players will present Buster Keaton?s silent film classic, ?The General,? with live musical accompaniment, on Sunday, March 2 at the Hoover Community Theater, located on the third floor of the Grundy County-Jewett Norris library.
The program, sponsored by the Grundy County Friends of the Arts and North Central Missouri College, will begin at 2 p.m.
Since their debut in 1980, the Bijou Players have been in demand throughout the Midwest. The group now has a repertoire of more than 15 films as musical accompaniment. James Luke, professor emeritus in the music and theater department at Drake University, directors the ensemble and is a clarinetist for the group. Violinist Janice Wade is chairperson of the string department and conductor of the orchestra at Wartburg College. Other members of the Bijou Players include cellist Martha Gerstenberger, cornetist Stephen Day, pianist Bruce Martin and percussionist Peter Simonson.
The program will begin with an overview of the silent film, followed by the classic, ?The General.? The production features a musical score containing traditional Civil War melodies as well as appropriate mood music for the silent screen. Included in the array of music are ?Hurry #2?, ?The Get Away?, ?The Sky Rocket?, ?The Plunger? and the devious ?Gruesome Misterioso.?
The presentation is free to Grundy County Friends of the Arts season ticketholders as well as NCMC students and staff. General admission is $2 at the door.
The production is being funded by the Heartland Arts Fund Program, a collaborative venture of Arts Midwest, Mid-American Arts Alliance and their member state arts agencies, including Missouri, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin. Primary funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts and support from private contributors.