ABOVE PHOTO: Rasaan H. Bourke (Photo courtesy: Rasaan H. Bourke)
By Constance Garcia-Barrio
Once upon a time, Rasaan H. Bourke, the organist at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church of Germantown, became known for his powerful playing.
“When I was between 12 and 20 years old, everything had to be grand,” Bourke, now 41, said. “Everything had to have an exclamation point at the end. From the gloria to the postlude, it was ‘Let’s go!’ It’s taken me time to see that subtlety can have power, too.”
On Sunday, October 29, Bourke will bring both subtlety and thunder to an unusual performance. He will play St. Luke’s magnificent organ to accompany the 1922 silent film Oliver Twist, featuring 1920s superstar Lon Chaney Sr.
Bourke, St. Luke’s sacred music director as well as its organist since 2021, began teaching himself to play the massive instrument at age 12.
“I sat down at the organ at Holy Rosary Church in northeast Bronx,” he said. “I was a kid in the grammar school and an altar server in the parish. Here I was, a Black kid in a white parish, sitting down at this $100,000 instrument. I didn’t even know how to turn it on. Someone did that for me. The organ is complicated. It took me a while to play the first note, to learn to pull out the stops.”
Bourke soon knew his way around the organ. He had the pedigree for it. His paternal grandfather, a conductor of the number 6 train in New York City, used to listen to Ravel, Béla Bartók, Igor Stravinsky, and Dimitri Shostakovich at the end of the day with a glass of Scotch in hand.
His maternal grandmother played the piano for her Sunday school class at Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. In addition, has father played the jazz drum and flute while his mother played the violin.
“I taught myself the organ until I was a sophomore in high school,” Bourke said. “At that point, I met my first teacher, the late Dr. Robert G. Owen of Bronxville, NY. Owen opened up my entire world to hearing, feeling and experiencing a pipe organ as a rhythmic three-dimensional instrument.”
Later, as an undergraduate, Bourke joined the Westminster Choir College and studied conducting with Dr. Thea Kano, founder of the New York City Master Chorale and artistic director of the Washington D.C. Gay Men’s Chorus.
Eventually, Bourke, who also plays the piano, attempted accompanying silent films.
“I’m not a theatre organist,” said Bourke, who took the leap at Our Lady of Victory Church in Bedstuy, Brooklyn. “On a theatre organ, you have sounds like running horses and screeching whistles. I didn’t know if my improvisation could support a film, but I told myself to give it a try,” It proved a stunning success.
“People went wild,” he said. “They could feel the music under the pews.”
Silent films began in New York City, Bourke’s hometown, in 1894. The Kinetoscope Parlor at the corner of Broadway and 27th Street in Manhattan showed films by Thomas Edison. During their heyday from 1910 to the late 1920s, the films were almost always accompanied by live music.
Bourke is one of a handful of Black musicians who still play for silent movies. Over the years, he has accompanied such silent classics as “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “The Phantom of the Opera,” “Nosferatu” and “Oliver Twist.”
The music has to jibe with the action, Bourke said.
“When they chase the phantom of the opera downstairs into his lair in the basement of the theatre, the music has to accord with the pursuit,” he said. “When the horse carriage is shaking and the buggy turns over, the music has to reflect those moments.”
This is the fourth year that Bourke has accompanied a famous silent film at St. Luke’s to celebrate Halloween. He has chosen “Oliver Twist” for this year, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1838 novel.
“The story is rich and the acting is brilliant,” Bourke said of the 1922 film starring Lon Chaney, Sr., nicknamed “the man of a thousand faces” for his ability to change his appearance with makeup. “The film’s message is that with attention, children can thrive even under tough circumstances.”
Bourke said that the extraordinary quality of St. Luke’s organ — “it’s a powerhouse” — will heighten the show. The organ, with 2,500 to 3,000 pipes, was designed by Carl C. Mitchell and first played on Easter Sunday in 1894. It has structural and tonal innovations that had never been seen in the U.S. at the time. American organ builders immediately began copying it, including the Ernest M. Skinner Company that built the mammoth organ in St. John the Divine Cathedral.
“St. Luke’s organ is scaled for the space, not too much, not too little,” said Bourke, who accompanied “Nosferatu,” a film about a vampire, last year. “People will see the film and hear the organ in a magnificent setting. You’re safe, you’re off the streets, and you get great entertainment.”
Both Bourke and Thomas Giles will provide live music. Giles will play alto sax, soprano sax, and tenor sax in addition to the clarinet and the flute.
Bourke and Giles will improvise rather than play from a score.“We’ll have a musical conversation as we play for the film,” Bourke said. “We’ll follow each other’s moods. We’ll create a musical dialogue in support of what people are seeing. It’s a history lesson, a cultural lesson, and a chance to build community, and it’s all under God’s roof. I feel so blessed that I can do this.”
“Oliver Twist” and the improvised accompaniment will be presented Sunday, October 29, at 5 p.m. at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and Retreat Center, 5421 Germantown Avenue. The film runs 90 minutes.
Doors will open at 4:30 p.m. Purchase tickets online at: www.olivertwist.brownpapertickets.com or at the rectory for $15. Tickets cost $20 at the door. Light refreshments will be served following the show.
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