My score for the 2020 compilation film THE BRILLANT BIOGRAPH was my first official theatrical release and is a score that is still very dear to me. Although written for solo piano, I even made some orchestral arrangements for some of the movements. It has been screened in over 200 cinemas all over the world. It is also my most requested score to perform live, and have done so several times in The Netherlands but also in Germany, Türkiye and even Thailand.

It was actually thanks to COVID that the release of the film was postponed, which resulted in time to compose an original score for it. It was written in less than two months, but actually less if you consider that I threw out the first two versions of the first two chapters. There were two things that made me struggle with this score when I started it. The first was the lack of narative on the one hand, but the wonderfully created tension bow that the film did have on the other hand. The compilation was made by Frank Roumen, who ingeniously, with so much love for the films and such a great sense for time and build up, structured the short films in 5 chapters that not only had a tension bow of their own, but also together. My first attempt had continuous music, so no silences between the films. This did not work, it sounded to.. what’s the word?.. crowded in a way. The second version of the first chapter had individual music per short film. But with 50 clips in total, it soon started to sound too fragmented. So in the end I found a midway, connecting some films and seperating others, while trying to follow the intended varition in tension as much as possible. While writing this I am actually curious what the previous versions sounded like… I have forgotten.. Let me look that up.

The delightful THE FLOOR BELOW with a delightful performance of Mabel Normand in the leading roll was my first full feature film to score for symphony orchestra. It was written for a chamber sized orchestra consisting of

1 flute

1 oboes

1 clarinet/bassclarinet

1 bassoon/contrabassoon

1 horn in F

1 trumpet

1 trombone

1 bass trombone

2-3 percussionists

Harp

Small string orchestra

It was commissioned for the Nederlands Silent Film Festival which for the second year in a row could not happen in real life due to COVID restrictions. Due to these limitations a live performance of the score never happened, so I created an orchestra in my own studio, by playing in all the different instruments one by one myself. I had an impossible deadline of one month to finish this, so every waking hour I worked on it. Sometimes not even taking the time to write everything down properly but just playing in layer after layer for every scene. It is a very thankful film to write for since it has comedy, tension, drama, chases, it has everything! The film has been published on the Eye Film Player, since the copy of the film belongs to the collection of the Eye Filmmuseum. The film can be seen in full here:

The Floor Below (1919)

This was my first commission for the Pordenone Silent Film Festival and premiered there in 2023 under the amazing direction of Ben Palmer. I have always loved this film very much, but had never accompanied it myself until the Nederlands Silent Film Festival programmed it in 2023. And when I was preparing by watching the film in silence, I suddenly saw a very different film from the one I knew. Yes, it was a comedy because it had so many gags, but the story itself was not a comedy at all. It was this heartwarming and heartfelt story of a sweet young man who dreams of greatness and who gets framed by a relentless womanizer who then tries to steal his girl. In a long dream sequence, filled with ‘impossible gags’ he sets things right, but awakes in a desillusion when he realised it was all a dream.

So although I of course wanted to acknowledge all the gags in the film, I wanted to create this heartwarming and endearing sound to surround the main character. The dream tune is still one of my favorite tunes I have written.

The score is written for symphony orchestra:

2 flutes (2nd doubling on piccolo)

2 oboes (2nd doubling on english horn)

2 clarinets (2nd doubling on bass clarinet)

2 bassoons (2nd doubling on contrabassoon)

2 horns

2 trumpets

1 trombone

1 bass trombone

1 tuba

3 percussionists

Harp

Piano

String orchestra

After its premiere I performed a solo piano version several times and also have arranged it for string orchestra with piano. This version will premiere (or maybe has already premiered when you read this) on May 20 2026 in Tuchinsky theater Amsterdam, performed by Lundi Blue and myself, conducted by Carel den Hartog

I edited some clips from the live performance in Pordenone which can be heard here. I am still hoping for a proper recording of course.

A wonderful collaboration between the Nederlands Silent Film Festival and the Nederlands Film Orchestra resulted in another full orchestral score. This time for Harold Lloyds masterpiece GRANDMA’S BOY. As with SHERLOCK JR, this film has a very heartfelt story which is not comedic at all. And again an insecure young man has a rival who wants to win his girl. He not only gets beaten up, but laughed at by other girls in town and bullied by the evil drifter who terrorizes the village. Feeling empowered by a (not real) lucky charm he feels the confident to stand up for himself.

Like I mentioned before, I really love scoring films like these, because you can use so many different musical ideas. It is a very funny film, but there is love, action, drama, everything. I have always believed you need to take the serious moments in comedy very seriously. It will make the film not just only funny but also sincere, it can make the underlying humor funnier, and will create a bigger contrast with the gag filled moments.

The orchestra size is as follows:

3 flutes (3rd doubling on piccolo)

2 oboes

2 clarinets

1 bass clarinet

2 bassoons

4 horns

3 trumpets

2 trombones

1 bass trombone

1 tuba

3 percussionists

1 piano/celesta

Large String Orchestra

Due to copyright restrictions, unfortunately I can not show the full film with music, but here are some of my favorite cues:

The score for Girl Shy was a commission from the wonderful Italian film jazz ensemble Zerorchestra, to be performed during the Pordenone Silent Film Festival but also at the Jazz and Wine Festival in Gorizia (It). There are so many different approaches on how to score a silent film, and for this film I wanted to fully score it with tunes on which we could improvise (rather than fully composed, or have inserted improvisations between the tunes). It’s again a lovely film about a (girl) shy boy who wants to overcome his insecurity. But this one, quite literally, had more jazz in it. So I took full advantage of my long gone past as a jazz pianist and experimented with how many moods and emotions I could portray in Jazz. For the Nederlands Silent Film Festival 2026, I revised the score, and actually reinstated some tunes I initially disgarded.

A collaboration with the Film Preservation Society in New York. A very charming film with the amazing Eddie Cantor and Clara Bow. Unfortunately there was only time and budget for a solo piano score, although if the opportunity ever comes, I would love to turn it into an ensemble score. I wanted to capture the sincereness of Cantor’s character while keeping the comedy up. It is a truly delightful film and the DVD with my score can be purchased here. I will post some snippets of the score later.

Kid Boots (1926) – With an original score by Daan van den Hurk

This is a great compilation in collaboration with film researcher Ivo Blom. Four different stories that take place in ancient Rome and Greece. I took a different approach and sound pallette for every film. Some are more set like a dramatic stageplay or small opera, while I also used sample sets of actual traditional Roman and Greek instruments to create an eerie, almost creepy score, because, well, the antagonist is really creepy… Hearing it now I would have made some different mixing choices, but I still like it.

The full compilation can be seen here on the Eye Film Player:

Museum of Dreamworlds

This was a magical film to score for me. In the film, a young boy loses himself in his books while being bullied in the real world. Until he takes matters in his own hand, and runs away from home to live the life of the heroes in his novels. It reminded me of how I got lost in books when I was a boy, or actually, I still do. So to create the music for all these fantasies was really cool. The music was originally composed and recorded for a livestream of the Giornate del Cinema Muto. I had four(!) wholedays to write and record.

The film will be published in full online by the Bundesarchiv soon, but up until then, here are some fragments:

This was a very special project, which made me feel like collaborating with the great Gabriel Fauré. The film was based on a stage play by George Clemenceau and no one else than Fauré composed original music for the play. The music has never been published but the manuscript was available through the Bibliothèque National de France. I first transcribed the original music and compared Fauré’s handwritten anotations with the original text of the play to see where which music was intended. I found most of these places in the film, which was of course adapted as a screen play, but the most complete restoration is also not fully complete. I then had to fill in the gaps (the restored version was 52 minutes, while I only had 11 minutes of original music) and tried to make the differences between my and Fauré’s music as natural as possible. I also made the ensemble a bit smaller (from 7 to 3 musicians) to make it more graspable, but, I won’t lie, also to make it easier to have it performed live.

The full film restoration with the recorded music will be published later, but until then, here are some fragments of the premier at the Nederlands Silent Film Festival, with myself on piano and conducting, Maaike Peters on Cello and Steven Henry on clarinet and bass clarinet.

This is a very new score commissioned by the San Fransisco Silent Film Preserve. A beautiful feature film starring Clara Bow. It will be released very soon, and I will write more on this then.

As a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, it has been a dream to score a Sherlock Holmes film. So I was really excited when I got commisioned by the string orchestra Lundi Blue to write this score. Hopefully more will follow.

It will premiere May 20, 2026 in Tuschinsky film theater in Amsterdam. After the premier a recording will be made, which I will publish here.