If you look up the song Smile and its lyrics on Google, one of the first results lists the song as being associated with Michael Jackson. After all, Jackson released a version of the song on his History album. Though it is one of the most performed songs the real identity of its songwriter is legendary movie star Charlie Chaplin. Violinist Philippe Quint, who recently recorded an album of Chaplin’s music, will bring his concert celebrating that music to the Irvine Barclay Theatre on February 28th.
Smile came from Chaplin’s 1936 film Modern Times. It remains to this day his best-known composition and was recently used in the film Joker. But Chaplin wrote a lot more music than just this song. In fact, if you look at most of Chaplin’s films, particularly those in the sound era, you’ll find that he was the composer of each film’s score and that there were multiple songs amongst those scores.
Quint has recorded all of the standard classical music repertoire for the violin. He has made appearances with most of the best-known orchestras world-wide. Chaplin’s Smile is his 17th recording. Joshua Bell joins him for two tracks on the record. Marta Aznavoorian plays piano for the recording. Joining Quint for this concert is pianist John Novacek.
Quint created new arrangements for the thirteen tracks recorded. There are literally dozens upon dozens of compositions written by Chaplin that he could choose from. In addition to Smile there is music from Limelight, City Lights and tracks that will feel like completely new discoveries on Quint’s recording.
The concert will not be, according to the website, strictly music by Chaplin. It will also include music by Debussy, Stravinsky, Brahms, and Gershwin. Quint will perform to clips of Chaplin’s silent era films. There is also the promise of rare video footage of Chaplin conducting his orchestras in recording sessions.
Go here my interview with Quint about his project.
For tickets go here.
Photo by Isi Akahome/Courtesy of the artist’s website
