Buffalo Film: Improv House program mixes the new and the old

By Elmer Ploetz

What is more American — or Americana — than baseball? Or jazz? Or both of them together?

Film, music and baseball fans can put that to the test Friday night when Buffalo Improv House hosts “The Old Ball Game” in its performance space at 255 Great Arrow Ave. (Suite 207) at 7:30 p.m.

The program will include a rare celebration of the game, combining film and baseball, with live music from Jared Engel and his band. It will be followed by a traditional jazz jam session.

Dan Reitz, the co-founder of Buffalo Improv House (and like this writer, a New York Mets fan), said he isn’t totally sure what to expect, even though he was there when the project’s roots began growing in New York City. He said he had known Engel since they became friends sharing stages and cabs in New York in the pre-pandemic era.

“During the pandemic, he (Engel) started something that he was calling the Unemployed Musicians Baseball League, which was a group of people who met in Prospect Park in Brooklyn to play baseball, and it was a ton of fun during the little bit of time that I was still down there,” Reitz said. “But then I moved to Buffalo and we stayed in touch from afar. That grew into something that was called the Formerly Unemployed Musicians Baseball League.

“Then some guys from that kind of collective basically started wanting to take their love of baseball a little farther, and so they started doing like producing some silent films and coming up with live music scoring for existing baseball silent films. That’s how their thing developed.”

RELATED MEDIA: The Musicians’ Baseball Club of Brooklyn in action.

Reitz said that when he heard Engel was going to be touring with the project, he sent him a message saying he wanted it at Buffalo Improv House.

“In terms of me wanting it, I just I’m just a big fan of Jared’s, a big fan of baseball, a big fan of music,” Reitz said.

The program promises new original silent films, performed with a live music score, plus vintage animated classics and vintage baseball films.

RELATED MEDIA: Trailer for “Day of the Catch,” based on a story of the creation of the phrase Grapefruit League (the traditional name for spring training games in Florida).

And the fact that the program is happening on the closing weekend of Major League Baseball’s regular season? That’s coincidence, Reitz says. But an appropriate one.