BAGA, Ena

Ena Rosina Baga (5 January 1906 – 15 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.

Born in Clerkenwell, London, in 1906, Ena Rosina Baga was the daughter of an Italian father, Constantine, and an Irish mother, Charlotte. Baga had three older sisters who were also musical - Celeste and Florence both played piano and organ, and Beatrice was a violinist with the Kensington Symphony Orchestra - which may come as no surprise based on their father's career. As Florence once described, on an episode of Desert Island Discs from 1975: Father played many instruments, and he was a very fine conductor. He was one of the very first creators of the large orchestras in the cinemas. In London we had the Angel Cinema, in Islington, and Dad had a band of twenty! I was so interested to hear the orchestra, and the special arrangements my father used to put to these pictures.