The Windup — a baseball-themed evening of songs, stories, and silent film.
Jaren Engel is a musician, filmmaker, and composer based in Brooklyn, NY. Earlier this year, Jared created a short silent film titled Day of the Catch, which tells the absurd but true story from 1915 spring training in Florida, when a player for the Brooklyn Robins (Casey Stengel) dropped a grapefruit from a biplane to his manager below—who was expecting to catch a baseball. The grapefruit splattered on impact, leading the manager to briefly believe his hand had been pulverized. Legend has it this very mishap inspired the name “the Grapefruit League,” Florida’s annual spring-training league.
In addition to writing and directing the film, Jared also composed the score, which is performed live at each screening (banjo and accordion). It is a 70-minute show called The Windup — a baseball-themed evening of songs, stories, and silent film. The show inlcudes the live-scoring of baseball scenes from historic silent films, as well as original baseball songs.
