People active in the silent era and people who keep the silent era alive. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Terry Donahue (left), Ken Winokur and Roger C. Miller. Photograph: courtesy The Alloy Orchestra.

The Alloy Orchestra

Formed in 1991 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Alloy Orchestra composed and performed unusual and entertaining music scores for silent films. Their numerous live appearances have included accompaniment for showings at The Telluride Film Festival, The Film Society of Lincoln Center, The Louvre Museum, The Pordenone Silent Film Festival, The New York Film Festival, The San Francisco Silent Film Festival, George Eastman Museum, and The Seattle International Film Festival. The Alloy Orchestra is Roger C. Miller (synthesizer), Terry Donahue (percussion, accordion, vocals) and Ken Winokur (percussion and clarinet).

The Alloy Orchestra composed scores for the following films: The Unknown, The Wind, Nosferatu, Metropolis, The Lost World, Man with the Movie Camera, South and Steamboat Bill, Jr., among others. The Alloy Orchestra has also scored the home video collections The Alloy Orchestra Plays Wild and Weird, Arbuckle & Keaton, Volume One and Arbuckle & Keaton, Volume Two.

The Alloy Orchestra has ceased to exist as of March 2020. The group was scheduled to make their farewell performances in the summer of 2020 but the Covid-19 pandemic cancelled the end of their Gallery of Monsters tour (canceling gigs at The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Ebertfest, San Francisco Silent Film Festival, and the Nostos Festival in Athens, Greece). There are no plans to reunite the group.

References: The Alloy Orchestra website and Ken Winokur.