Saturday, September 6, 2025
$23 Tickets
[all-in pricing, no additional fees]
Doors 7pm | Film 7:30pm
Experience the film just as audiences would have in the silent film era . . . with live piano!
Down to the Sea in Ships (1922), directed by Elmer Clifton and filmed in New Bedford, Massachusetts, is a full feature silent film that will be screened at the Narrows Center with musical score performed live at a grand piano by Dr. Jennifer A. Maxwell, a Grammy-nominated classical concert pianist.
About the Film
Down to the Sea in Ships was a blockbuster back in the day. With its theme of whaling and its inclusion of the only legally filmed whale hunt in cinema history, the film is a brilliant record of local maritime heritage. It contains semi-documentary footage of whalers at work, shot on historic locations in the New Bedford area featuring landmarks including the Quaker Meeting House, Seamen’s Bethel, and the whaling ship Charles W. Morgan, on exhibit at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. The film’s title cards contain quotes from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Alexander Starbuck’s History of the American Whale Fishery. The authenticity of the whaling scenes is lauded in the opening screen credits, which praise the bravery of both A.G. Penrod and Paul H. Allen, the cameramen, “who, in small boats, stood by their cameras at the risk of their lives to photograph the fighting whales.” Down to the Sea in Ships also is notable for featuring the debut of flapper IT girl movie star Clara Bow.
About the Score
Using some archival material from the film’s 1922 premiere at the Olympia Theater in New Bedford and some original material, Maxwell created a theme for each character (hero’s theme, villain’s theme, etc.) and each type of action (love theme, whaling theme, etc.). She also utilized some vintage tunes that would have been recognizable in the day, weaving them in with the original music to give a period feeling. These are all cued to the relevant sections, composed in keys that segue appropriately, and timed precisely to fit the scenes – all with the purpose of underscoring the narrative and providing cohesion in a medium in which there is no dialogue. The result is a musical score that is vibrantly connected with the film itself, performed dynamically in concert with the film.
Down to the Sea in Ships is very New England and very family friendly. Come enjoy a movie and a piano concert!
About Dr. Jennifer A. Maxwell
Pianist/Educator/Scholar
American pianist Dr. Jennifer A. Maxwell has earned acclaim for her versatility as a performer, educator, and scholar. A 2016 and 2018 Grammy Award Nominee, she has performed thousands of concerts of solo and chamber repertoire across the country, been featured in television and radio interviews, written a film score, and judged competitions.
Maxwell has presented performances at the Providence Veterans Memorial Auditorium, Boston University, Lyman Allyn Museum, New Bedford Whaling Museum, Nantucket Whaling Museum, Nantucket Atheneum, Thacher Hall, Jamestown Piano Association, Rhode Island College, Music in the Loft, Steinway of Chicago, Mostly Music Concert Series, CUBE Chicago Contemporary Music Series, Schubertiade Chicago, Illinois State Music Teachers Chicago, University of Wisconsin, University of Illinois, Music Institute of Chicago, and PianoForte Great Pianists Series, among others; performed concerti with the Southern Illinois Symphony and University of Chicago Symphony; been featured on Live From WFMT Chicago Classical Radio; and she was the pianist for the National Association for Music Education convention. Recent activities include solo recitals of Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, and Adès; an interview/performance on National Public Radio; the Red Violin program with Red Mendelssohn Stradivarius owner Elizabeth Pitcairn; a program of music by women composers; Stravinsky’s virtuosic Petrouchka on the Nantucket Arts Council Celebrity Series with duo partner Dr. Svetlana Belsky; Beethoven in Havana, a new tango by Joachim Horsley adapted as a piano concerto; a popular lecture recital on the history of the piano and its repertoire; and repeat shows of her archival/original score for the 1922 classic silent film Down to the Sea in Ships. She also has performed on period instruments, presenting an annual fortepiano recital at the historic Whitehall Mansion. Maxwell is featured in director Jay Craven’s 2022 film Martin Eden.
Maxwell has been a professor at Roger Williams University and the University of Rhode Island, and she is faculty emerita at Nantucket Music Center. Previously she held positions at the University of Chicago, Louisville Orchestra, Kentucky Center for the Arts, and University of Louisville. Maxwell earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Boston University, where she was in the studio of the legendary Anthony di Bonaventura and was granted a dissertation scholarship to research and write Tracing a Lineage of the Mazurka Genre: Influences of Szymanowski and Chopin on the Mazurkas of Thomas Adès.
After three years as an auditor and procurement office with the City of New Bedford, Maxwell is presently an auditor at Fall River CPA firm Hague Sahady & Co.
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