Silent Movie Under the Stars 2025

Live music was an integral part of the moviegoers' experience in the 19 teens and 1920s. Films may not have had spoken dialogue, but they were not silent. Typically a pianist or organist would accompany the film. A hundred years later, music continues to play a pivotal role in our enjoyment and appreciation of the films from this era.

WSM thanks The Djangoners who performed along side The Eagle, starring Rudolph Valentino, at Silent Movie Under the Stars 2025; Eric Aceto on violin, Bobby Henrie on lead guitar, Harry Aceto on Manouche rhythm guitar, and Brian Williams on double bass.

From Harry Aceto:
"The Djangoners are inspired by guitar genius Django Reinhardt's Quintet of the Hot Club of France. Django was born in 1910 to an itinerant Manouche Gypsy family that travelled throughout Europe & North Africa, eventually settling near Paris, where he played in the cafes & musette dancehalls as a very young man. He eventually created an entirely new genre that was a tusion of traditional tastern European Gypsy music, with it's passionate, soulful, dark-sounding harmonies, and the 1920's hot jazz of Americans like Duke Ellington & Louis Armstrong, as well as the compositions of Impressionist classical composers like Debussy & Greig. His work has humbled guitarists all over the world, & will always be some of the most sad/joyful music ever created. The Djangoners felt his compositions would perfectly complement the era of the 1925 film, but also the ethos/pathos of life in Czarist Russia portrayed in The Eagle"