Alexander Rannie

Composer and historian Alexander Rannie's affinity for music and film goes back to his early childhood; he started playing the violin at the age of five and made his first stop-motion animated film when he was eight. As a pianist, organist and harpist, he has performed at the Pasadena Playhouse, LA's Reprise Theatre Company, REDCAT, Steve Allen Theater, The Lab, Cavern Club, Disneyland, LACMA, UCLA, USC, Orpheum Theatre, Los Angeles Theater, Hollywood Heritage Museum, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Orange County Performing Arts Center, York Theatre Company, Abrons Art Center, on numerous albums and film soundtracks, and live alongside such inimitable talents as Angela Lansbury, Carol Channing, Shirley Jones, Lorna Luft, Clay Aiken, and matchless "Glee" pianist Brad Ellis. In addition, Rannie and his harp have accompanied performance artist Ann Magnuson in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Charleston, West Virginia. Rannie has consulted on myriad projects for The Walt Disney Company, including the restoration of Fantasiatt0032455/combined's original Stokowski-Philadelphia Orchestra Fantasound soundtrack, and his interactive creations can be experienced at The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. For the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and in conjunction with Ring Festival LA, Rannie produced the opening clip-reel, wrote program notes, and curated an exhibit of rare musical artifacts for "What's Opera, Doc? Animation and Classical Music." In 2011 he performed his compilation score for Tol'able David (1921) as part of the Motion Picture Academy's Summer of Silents. Original compositions include chamber and vocal works, as well as music for "The Ren & Stimpy Show," stop-motion animation studio Screen Novelties' short film Monster Safari, and scores of scores for silent movies, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916) and George Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913). Rannie's reconstruction of Carl Stalling's score for the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy, was premiered by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) in 2004 (with an encore performance in 2015), and in 2010 the orchestra performed his original score for Walt Disney's Alice Comedy Alice's Wild West Show (1924). In 2011 LACO commissioned an original score from Rannie for Walt Disney's Oswald the Lucky Rabbit short Trolley Troubles (1927), which he conducted from the piano. Rannie's latest creation is Disney in Concert: A Silly Symphony Celebration, an orchestra-with-movie presentation featuring reconstructions of seven Silly Symphony scores which allows modern audiences to hear live, for the first time ever, what Walt Disney and his staff heard on the scoring stage of the Hyperion Studio in the 1920s and '30s.