Performance at Carnegie library to spotlight silent film legend
Charlie Chaplin is enjoying a revival in Carnegie.
The silent film genius will be in the spotlight when the third season of the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall's “Listen Locally” series opens with “Tom Roberts' Charlie Chaplin Silent Picture Show” on Oct. 30.
That night, the music hall will be filled with the sights and sounds of Chaplin via a mixed-media presentation. Audiences will view “The Rink” and “The Pawn Shop,” both from 1916, and “Kid Auto Races at Venice,” the silent movie that introduced “Little Tramp” to America and the world in 1914, and hear the background music as performed by pianist Tom Roberts and Mary Beth Malek, principal clarinetist with the Pittsburgh Opera and Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, from Penn Hills.
When Roberts first performed his rescored version of “The Pawn Shop,” as commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra in 2012, it was well received by the audience.
With only music as a guide to the characters' actions on the screen, Roberts explained: “(Silent film) is the most powerful thing imaginable, beyond what I'd expect it to be.”
That same kind of intensity had occurred when he first heard “The Entertainer,” a song written by Scott Joplin in 1902 and revived for the movie, “The Sting,” in 1973.
“I was transported,” Roberts, a Pittsburgh native, said. “It was a different time, a different place.”
Chaplin's slapstick comedies work on so many levels, he said, all while connecting audiences of all ages. The music ties them together. In the early years of the 20th century, theaters had full orchestras to accompany the films they featured, he said.
“That is how it was way back then. Only the dive-iest of theaters had just the piano.”
Maggie Forbes, executive director of the Carnegie institution, was pleased when Roberts brought his performance idea to her. Roberts was “an excellent jazz pianist,” she said, and the chamber music series was perfect for his two-person ensemble.
“I liked the edginess of it,” she said, “and it could attract a range of people, film buffs and music buffs.”
The music hall on the hill always held an attraction for him.
“I wanted to get in there with something,” he said. “It's an opulent theater.”
Dona S. Dreeland is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. She can be reached at 412-388-5803 or ddreeland@tribweb.com.
