Composers spend months trying to match music and action seamlessly for films. But for David Drazin, 48, the process takes a matter of seconds.

The Rogers Park resident has played improv piano accompaniment to silent films for the past 20 years all over the country, including North Carolina and New York, and twice at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy as a special guest pianist.

And Drazin provided accompaniment to the silent films “A Cottage on Dartmoor” and Victor Seastrom’s “The Scarlet Letter” at Block Cinema on Feb. 16.

In addition to touring the world, Drazin is a mainstay at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State Street, where he has played improv scores for the films of F.W. Murrow, Buster Keaton and Yasujiro Ozu, among others.

“The movie triggers a response in me to play,” says Drazin, who often has never seen the films before he accompanies them. “There’s so many more possibilities in the world of cinema then anyone can imagine.”

Will Schmenner, film curator at Block Cinema, has worked with Drazin since Schmenner ran a documentary film group as an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago in 2000.

“You should never compare composing a score to doing improv,” Schmenner says. “With improv, you must be on your feet and react to the audience.”

Drazin says he prefers playing improv rather than following a written score. “I feel divided between what the music says and what the picture says,” he says.

Music has been a part of Drazin’s life since, his father taught him how to play records on their family’s phonograph when he was four.

When he was five, his mother began giving him piano lessons in their Cleveland home. Although he was classically trained, the music of James P. Johnson, Bud Powell and Herbie Hancock transformed Drazin into a jazz musician

“I have a traditional jazz heart, but I also grew up with the Beatles, Rolling Stones and other ’60s music,” Drazin says.

He fused this love for jazz and rock ‘n’ roll when he went on to play in a wedding band at the age of 17. Drazin then graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor’s degree in music, as one of two students to graduate from the school’s special jazz program. When he ventured out into the real world, the music lounge scene proved less satisfying than he had expected.

“People are supposed to listen,” Drazin says. “But when there’s a drunk slumped over a chair in a bar, you know you’re not going to get anywhere playing for that one guy.”

From that point Drazin made his goal to play for people, not to people. Drazin came to Chicago in 1982 and found a way to get a gig and cure his lonliness. A fan of movies, he made a bargain with the manager of the film center at the Art Institute of Chicago, now called the Gene Siskel Film Center. Drazin would provide piano accompaniment for silent films if the manager would allow him to watch the films for free. He got the job, and his first official gig was playing for Fred Niblo’s “The Mark of Zorro.”

Now Drazin has played for dozens of films, his favorite of the classics being Keaton’s 1927 Civil War film “The General.”

“He brings years of experience,” Schmenner says. “He gets better every year because he’s very attune to his audience.”

In addition to playing for the jazz band Jesse Scinto and The Dignitaries, Drazin has also been providing piano accompaniment for ballet classes at the Evanston School of Ballet, Gus Giordano Jazz Dance Center, Inaside Chicago Dance and NU since 1980.

Whereas playing for movies followed Drazin’s passion for film, playing for dance happened by accident. The opportunity arose when a woman ventured into an Ohio lounge that Drazin played in during the early 1980s. The woman asked Drazin to substitute for a modern dance class for which she was providing piano accompaniment. Pretty soon he was asked to play for the ballet class upstairs.

Drazin mostly plays for ballet classes from written scores, but when offered the chance to perform improv, he takes it.

“The thing I like about (improv) is you can use the whole range of expressions that a piano offers,” he says. “(In the films) when the chase starts or the fight breaks out, you can go wild. And in ballet, when the dancers are racing from one end to the other, you have to let them have it.”

Having performed at both lounges and theaters, Drazin says he prefers dance classes and movie theaters over piano bars and saloons. To him, the difference is in the audience.

“With films and dance, I can push my luck with it as much as I can. But in piano bars, you know when you’ve gone too far because people will tell you to shut up,” Drazin says.

He says playing for audiences of silent films means the most to him. “The audience is full of people, they’re quiet, they’re facing the same way, and as long as they haven’t had too much coffee, their attention span will be as long as the movie lasts,” he says. “With silent films I have finally succeeded in playing for people.”4

Medill sophomore Archana Ram is a PLAY writer. She can be reached at [email protected].