An intriguing blend of horror, humor and musical wizardry will be served up this Halloween at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church of Germantown. The church will host a screening of “The Monster,” one of America’s first horror/comedy films. A trio of live professional musicians will improvise an accompaniment on the spot.
Rasaan H. Bourke, 43, St. Luke’s director of sacred music and one of a handful of Black musicians who still plays for silent movies, has accompanied freaky features such as “The Phantom of the Opera” for eight years. His mastery of the organ has roots in his youth. “I went from Matchbox cars to listening to [Beethoven’s] ‘Ode to Joy,’” he said.
That leap comes as no surprise since music seems to hum in his Bourke genes. His paternal grandfather, conductor of the 6 train in New York City, Bourke’s hometown, used to listen to Ravel, Béla Bartók, and Dmitri Shostakovich at the end of the day, a glass of Scotch in hand, Bourke recalled. “My dad was an amazing jazz musician,” he added. “He played the flute, double bass, and drums and would perform at clubs in Harlem. My mom played the flute as a child.”
Age 14 proved a fateful time for Bourke, then a student at the school run by Holy Rosary Church in the northeast Bronx. “I was a kid in the grammar school and an altar server,” he said. “The organ set off fireworks inside of me. I knew that the organ was something special, a box to unlock.”
After mass one day, Bourke approached the organist and said, “I want to join the choir.” The organist was delighted. Then Bourke asked her if he could play the organ before choir practice.
“Do you know how?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
A long moment passed before she said, “Okay, come a half hour early, but don’t tell Father Hamilton.”
The following week, the organist turned on the $100,000 instrument for Bourke and pulled out two stops. After she left, Bourke fiddled with the keyboards, eventually pulled out all the stops, and pressed several keys. The organ exploded with sound.
“At the beginning, everything I played had to end in an exclamation point,” Bourke said. The organist used to urge him to tone it down, but that would come with time.
Bourke taught himself the organ until he was a high school sophomore. By then, he was playing the organ for parish youth group gatherings and other services. “At that point, I met my first teacher, the late Dr. Robert G. Owen, of Bronxville, New York.”
By the time Bourke began accompanying silent films, he had long since developed subtlety. The films’ shifting emotions as well as church services demanded it. “The instrument has to open up, to flower,” Bourke said. “There has to be room for God.”
Scenes in the “The Monster” require all the nuance that Bourke and his fellow musicians, saxophonist Thomas A. Giles, and clarinetist Marquise Lindsey-Bradley, can summon. This 1925 box-office hit tells the story of an insane scientist, Dr. Ziska. who devises a plan to trap human subjects for his experiments. It includes disappearances, the doctor’s weird assistants, a bumbling detective, romance, and a sanitarium mistakenly believed to be uninhabited.
Lon Chaney, dubbed “the Man of a Thousand Faces” for his consummate skill as a makeup artist, plays Dr. Ziska. Raised by deaf parents, Chaney was also an extraordinary mime, thanks to using body language to communicate with his family.
St. Luke’s historic organ will heighten the action on screen. “It’s a powerhouse,” Bourke said. The organ, with 2,500 to 3,000 pipes, was designed by Carl C. Mitchell and was first played on Easter Sunday in 1894. It has structural and tonal innovations never seen before in the United States. American organ builders immediately began copying it, including the Ernest M. Skinner Co. that built the mammoth organ in St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York.
Giles, of New York City, who both teaches and plays saxophones from alto to bass, will join Bourke in the marathon of improvisation. “It’s a physical feat to stand and blow air” for 86 minutes, Giles said. “I sweat a lot.”
But live accompaniment will let guests savor a tradition. “We used to have organs at ballparks, and they were built into movie theaters,” Giles said. St. Luke’s is the perfect place to enjoy this bit of the past, he noted. “It’s an old stone church, like a movie set in itself.”
In previous years, the trio rehearsed together rigorously before accompanying a film. This time, they’ve viewed the film and considered the music separately. “Our playing will be much more spontaneous,” said Giles, who also plays the flute. “When Dr. Ziska appears, I might play a bass clarinet, something that rumbles, a little guttural. It’s exciting.”
For The Rev. David Morris, rector of St. Luke’s, the show represents another way that the church welcomes the community. “It’s a way to further open the church to our neighbors, in addition to the food pantry, clothes closet, and free Saturday lunch,” he said, noting that St. Luke’s four-acre campus has several buildings from the mid-1890s as well as a retreat center. “The church itself was completed in 1873 as an act of thanksgiving for the end of the Civil War.”
Father Dave encourages guests to come in costume. There will be goody bags for all.
St. Luke’s is located at 5421 Germantown Ave. “The Monster,” will be shown on Friday, Oct. 31. The film has a runtime of 86 minutes and is appropriate for viewers age 12 and older. Tickets are $20 with a limited number of VIP tickets, at $60, for seating in the chancel. Two parking lots will be open to attendees and street parking will be available. The event will be staffed by security. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the screening starts promptly at 7 p.m. Tickets may be purchased at the church office, at the door, or online at themonster.bpt.me. Call (215) 844-8544 for details.
