Ena Baga

Ena Rosina Baga (5 January 190615 July 2004) was a British pianist and theatre organist. She is best known for improvising accompaniments to silent films, both in the 1920s and during the revival of interest in silent films that began in the 1970s.

Career

Early years

Baga was born at Clerkenwell in 1906 to an Italian father, Constantine, and an Irish mother, Charlotte. Her father was musical director for the Angel Cinema, Islington and conducted an orchestra to accompany silent films. After the family moved to Southend, 12-year-old Baga began playing organ for the Roman Catholic Church.

1920s–1930s

In the 1920s, when silent film theatres began replacing orchestras with one organist playing a theatre organ (as a cost-cutting measure), Baga became an organist for silent films, improvising music that dramatized the emotions or actions depicted in the film. In 1928, when "talking pictures" arrived, she provided music for the intermission between the opening "B-movie" and the feature movie.

Baga also did other musical jobs, such as accompanying music hall performers on a small Wurlitzer organ. In 1932 she was invited to Balmoral, where she improvised music for Charlie Chaplin's ''The Gold Rush'' for George V and Queen Mary. From 1940 to 1945, she replaced Reginald Dixon as the organist of the Tower Ballroom.

1945–1960s

After the war, the great pipe organs in theatres and cinemas were seldom used. In some theatres, the organs were removed to make room for bigger Cinemascope screens. From 1957 to 1962 Baga visited southern Africa to perform for the Italian workers building the Kariba dam in Northern Rhodesia.

By the 1960s, though, interest in organs was revived, and Hammond organs were imported from the US as home organs. In the 1960s, Baga played an electric organ at Joe Lyons's corner house on Tottenham Court Road, and later at the Jolly Blacksmith at Fulwell. Baga updated her repertoire to suit the 1960s, and the new Hammond electric organ, performing tunes such as ''Smoke Gets in Your Eyes''.

Late 1960s–2000s

In 1968, her ''Champagne for Two'' was released on Crystal CRY 3010. She was backed by percussionist Eric Howell.Discogs
Ena Baga – Champagne For Two
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When London theatres began showing silent films again in the late 1960s and into the 1980s, she played organ again for silent movies, improvising melodies and passages to suit the onscreen action. She performed on the Light Programme, and from 1969 on, she played on BBC Radio 2's ''The Organist Entertains''. In 1976, she gave Oscar Peterson a masterclass on how play for silent film scenes.

She has several roles in film and television (playing herself), such as in '' Upstairs, Downstairs'', and later in Richard Attenborough's film ''Chaplin'' (1992). Her recordings include ''Happy'' ''Hammond Plays the Beatles'' and ''Happy Hammond Plays Bacharach''. Her composition ''Bagatelle'' is a word play on her name that uses its four letters as musical notes. Baga dressed in a theatrical style, with evening gowns and sequinned tops. She outlived her two husbands (Reginald Turnbull and then James Hamilton-Brown).

References

Bibliography

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External links

Ena Baga
voice recording and interview transcript at the History Project.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Baga, Ena
1906 births
2004 deaths
English women pianists
English organists
Theatre organists
British women organists
People from Clerkenwell
English people of Italian descent
20th-century British pianists
20th-century English musicians
20th-century British organists
20th-century English women musicians
English people of Irish descent
20th-century British women pianists
Crystal (record label) artists
Philips Records artists