Sunday Silents with Live Piano Accompaniment from Mike Hatchard

We are excited to offer this special screening of silent film(s) with live piano accompaniment from Mike Hatchard, Hastings musician and raconteur!

Expect an audio-visual treat taking you back to the sounds and atmosphere of pre-talkies cinema, where the musician in the auditorium played along to the images on screen to cover up the sound of the projector!

Mike took a music degree in Colchester and a postgrad at the Royal College of Music where he studied composition under Philip Cannon and piano under Peter Wallfisch. He then joined the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. In his early twenties he toured America and Europe accompanying Cleo Laine on piano and became Matt Monro’s youngest ever musical director. He toured with Barbara Thompson’s Paraphernalia, the Pasadena Roof Orchestra and worked with artists as varied as Maxine Daniels, Johnny Van Derrick, Salena Jones, Tina May and David Essex.

Touring with Freddy Starr and becoming musical director to Pamela Stephenson he took an interest in comedy and performed his own shows on the circuit as ‘Marvin Hanglider’ which led to co-writing songs with Frankie Howerd and Spike Milligan. He performed hundreds of concerts with bassist Herbie Flowers, including the Southbank and sell-out concerts at the Edinburgh Festival.

Mike has written three musicals including the Mayor Of Casterbridge (Harry Secombe Centre, Sutton and George Square Theatre, Edinburgh), an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel which is being revived for inclusion in this year’s Wordfest Festival in Shoreham this September. In the classical arena he MD’d ‘A Night at the Opera’(Lyric Theatre), toured and recorded with the Chamber Ensemble of London, recorded with clarinettist Emma Johnson and concert violinists Peter Fisher, Sophie Langton and Beverley Davison and worked with various chamber ensemble including the Ardenti String Quartet. He has also performed with Margaret Fingerhut OBE performing Rhapsody in Blue and his own ‘Rhapsody in Green’.

In spite of all this compulsive versatility Mike is still obsessive about playing the piano, often practising up to eight hours in a day on his beloved reconditioned century old Steinway Grand, and always setting new musical goals for himself - and we are delighted to welcome him to the Electric Palace and get our in-screen piano some action!

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Thank you.