Charlie Chaplin Silent Film Night at the Pocahontas Opera House
Renowned pianist and composer Tom Roberts is proud to say that he has achieved everything he set out to do in his life. Growing up in a tough Pittsburgh neighborhood, his father and grandfather, neither of which graduated from high school, spent their whole lives working in the steel mills. Roberts wanted a different life.
“So I set all these practically unachievable goals” he said, “for the child of a mill hunkey, [with] multiple generations of mill hunkies. And I achieved all of them. I lived in New Orleans, I lived in New York [city], I played at the 92nd Street Y. I’ve done music for [film director] Martin Scorsese for the film, The Aviator, I’ve arranged music for Wynton Marsalis.”
“I’m astounded at everything that I’ve done. Because I did everything I set out to do, my goal now is to just bring happiness to people.”
One of the ways he tried to bring happiness is by playing for silent films, which have had a bit of a renaissance a little over one hundred years after they first appeared on the silver screen. He’ll be playing the piano to accompany three films from Charlie Chaplin’s early years at the Pocahontas Opera House, Saturday, November 22nd at 7pm.
“I was hired by the Pittsburgh Symphony,” said Roberts. “They said can you improvise some music for some silent movies – I can do that in my sleep. And then I found out it was these Charlie Chaplin mutual films were what they wanted. I said, oh, God, no! If you were to improvise to these films, you would totally destroy Chaplin’s intent.”
Nonetheless, he was persuaded to take up the challenge.
“For every 30 seconds of film you will see on the screen, I worked non-stop for 17 hours,” Roberts said.
“What is it about silent films that makes them particularly difficult to score?”
“Not all silent films are the same,” he said. “But the Chaplin films are very complex and they are very much dependent upon the audience’s experience of the music, so I wouldn’t say difficult – I would say challenging. What I try to do as a composer is to create subconscious connections in the listener to what they’re seeing on the screen.”
Roberts said viewing silent films is not some trendy new pastime; rather he says they’ve never truly gone away. And in the early days of silent films, it was not unusual to have a full symphony orchestra accompany the film. Later iterations saw the use of the Wurlitzer organ, intended to replace an entire symphony orchestra.
“The organ came about as a result of trying to come up with a more economic solution to having to pay all those musicians,” he said. “The Wurlitzer organ could sound like a full orchestra with all of those stops, and bells and whistles. In fact, the whole idea of ‘bells and whistles’, that comes from the organs.”
Roberts will only have only his trusty piano for the performance Saturday night.
“I have just kind of re-imagined these things for solo piano” said Roberts. “And they’re very complex, yet they’re very beautiful and I like to think that the audience will be transported into the film. They will forget they are sitting in the Pocahontas Opera House; they will forget themselves and they will merge into this film.”
The Charlie Chaplin Silent Film Night is Saturday, November 22nd at 7pm at the Pocahontas Opera House. Tickets are $10 for adults, and admission is free for those 17 and under. Tickets can be purchased online at pocahontasoperahouse.org, at the 4th Avenue Gallery in Marlinton, or at the door on the night of the show.
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