Jonny Best’s fingers possess a superpower. As he moves them over a piano, 100-year-old silent characters come alive on the screen and the audience will feel a range of emotions. Sitting at a corner of a screen, Best, a resident pianist at the British Film Institute’s Southbank Theatre, dictates the audience's experience of silent films screened at the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK).
During the screening, his eyes are firmly fixed on the screen most of the time. And he improvises organically as the film proceeds. “When you are working on the silent film as an improviser, there is no notated music,” Best told THE WEEK. “The music is all just found at that moment. If I am able to see the film beforehand, then I try to have an idea of the kind of sounds that [should be given during the screening]. But I do not plan two hours of music. You could not possibly remember it. So it is a process of letting go.”
It was by accident that Best found his calling in silent films. He began his professional career in the 1990s as a musical director and keyboard player on musicals in the West End of London. He worked as an assistant director at the Royal Shakespeare Company and as an associate director to the National Theatre.
Best also had music-theatre collaborations with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia and BBC Radio 3. He recently completed Ph.D. at the University of Huddersfield music department, working on silent film improvisation. Best also carries out historical research into silent-era musical practices, teaches improvisation, leads masterclasses, and runs workshops and projects with young people.
The pianist says that his techniques are far different to those employed by the pianists of the 1910s and 1920s. In UK and US, improvisation was not common in the 1910 and 1920s. It died out in the 19th century and pianists were all into notated music. "So, pianists of the 1920s are very unlikely to have improvised. What is much more likely is that they might have assembled a little collection of existing pieces of music, classical music and applied it to the film," says Best. "So that is what musicians did in the silent era. There were some organists, church organists, who would have improvised. But the vast majority of pianists who worked in film, most of them will not have improvised. Improvisation for silent films did not really happen until the new wave of silent film in the late 1980s and late 1990s."
Even though an improviser, Best also uses a little bit of existing music during his live shows. “I use a bit of idea from Norwegian composer Edward Green,” he says. The musician, who has played at the 50th International Film Festival of India also, says that he has to accept a certain degree of imperfection in his performance. “Because it is a live show and nothing can be taken, amended or edited,” he says.
Though he has the bravado to get immersed in a film without any prior preparation, he prefers to see the film for which he has to play beforehand. “You sit at the keyboard and the film is about to begin. The audience is there and at some point, you will make a decision about how you are going to begin and where the hands would be. What the first idea would be? I might decide that a long time before. I might decide that seconds before the film. But before playing, I want to have a view of the film so that I have some kind of understanding of the film,” he says.
At IFFK, Best is delivering his magical music for five silent films, all made in the 1920s. These films include F.W. Murnau’s German expressionist horror thriller Nosferatu, Erich von Stroheim’s erotic drama Foolish Wives, Swedish comedy-drama The Parson’s Widow, Victor Sjostorm’s 1921 philosophical film The Phantom Carriage and Curtis Bernhardt’s captivating film The Women Men Yearn For. Best says each film genre is a challenge as the treatment required for horror is different from that required in a comedy.
However, he sees emotional dramas as films that give an artistic kick. He points out that playing for emotional dramas, with exceptional close-ups, is a major challenge, and he enjoys it. Delivering the right tones that suit each genre is another challenge that Best has to deal with. However, when challenges become tougher, his music quality also would increase. Best presents himself as an always-smiling, jovial man without any pretensions.
He now lives in Yorkshire, an English county with a moniker, The God’s Own Country. At IFFK, he found a unique bond with Kerala, the south Indian state which has also got the same moniker: ‘God’s own country'. In Yorkshire, he runs a silent film festival. He has produced multiple mixed art forms and classical music festivals across the UK and led Queer Up North International Festival, Holmfirth Arts Festival, and Classical Sheffield Festival.