Sunrise (1927) w/ live music by Leslie Amper

Join us for our next installment in our Silents, Please! series of classic silent films with live musical accompaniment - it's F.W. Murnau's beautiful, tragic love story SUNRISE, with live music by acclaimed pianist Leslie Amper. 

Bored with his wife (Janet Gaynor), their baby and the dull routine of farm life, a farmer (George O'Brien) falls under the spell of a flirtatious city girl (Margaret Livingston) who convinces him to drown his wife so they can escape together. When his wife becomes suspicious of his plan and runs away to the city, the farmer pursues her, slowly regaining her trust as the two rediscover their love for each other in this award-winning silent classic.

Sunrise won the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production at the 1st Academy Awards in 1929. Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award forBest Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in the film (she also won for her performances in 1927's 7th Heaven and 1928's Street Angel). In 1989, Sunrise was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the United States Library of Congress for films that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The 2007 update of the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films ranked it number 82, and theBritish Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll named it the fifth-best film in the history of motion pictures, while directors named it 22nd.

About Leslie Amper:

A winner of the National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalist Fellowship Grant, 
Ms. Amper has been invited to perform on Monadnock Music’s Virtuoso Piano Series, Emmanuel Music solo and chamber music celebrations of Schumann, Beethoven, and Harbison, Pittsburgh Symphony Concerts at the Point, Friday Musicale of Jacksonville, Florida, New Hampshire Music Festival and Harvard University’s Fromm Music Foundation Concerts, as well as in England, Italy, and Austria.

Leslie Amper is a member of the Jubilee Trio and the Alcyon Chamber Ensemble. She has recorded for Brave and Neuma Records; her recording of Andrew Imbrie’s Short Story was selected for the international radio broadcast “Art of the States.”

Ms. Amper toured the United States with her lecture/piano recital related the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Exhibition 1934: A New Deal for Artists. She was invited by the cutting edge theater director Peter Sellars to be an onstage pianist playing Scriabin in his American National Theater production in Washington, D.C. of Chekhovʼs A Seagull.