Quint has recorded much of the standard repertoire for a violinist including the concerti of Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn, Bruch, Korngold and Rozsa. What prompted him to record this goes back to his childhood in Russia when there were just three television channels and Chaplin’s films were regularly broadcast. That was where I started my phone conversation with him last week.

“I think the one thing about Chaplin movies and his music is that nostalgic feeling that gets everyone to travel to a certain time or memory,” he says. “In many ways it was a journey back to my childhood.”

Many people know the song Smile, but few may know that it was written by Chaplin. Fewer still know that the great comedian, director, writer also composed the music for his films. Bringing greater awareness to Chaplin’s work as a composer was just one impetus for Quint to record this album.

“There is a great degree of sincereitywe don’t see these days,” he reveals. “Chaplin resonates with so many people because his films and his music is a heart-on-a-sleeve approach. He was a one-man show: producer, director, writer, composer, arranger, everything. But what he was able to achieve is the great mockery of social issues. The same social issues we are dealing with today from political to personal to tabloids of the time to inequality and diversity. It was all in his films.”

Given how much control Chaplin had on his films, Quint hopes that if he could hear the record, Chaplin would like it for one simple reason.

“One of the big challenges in putting these arrangements together was to preserve the simplicity of his music. In other words, not create some impossible Pagannini-like arrangements.”

When he was writing scores for his film, Chaplin favored the violin. Which comes in handy for a musician like Quint.

“He played the violin left-handed. He loved the violin. Lucky me! Just two weeks ago I got to hold that violin. It’s the violin he purchased when he was 16 years old and you can see it in The Vagabond. Of course I could not play a note because it is set-up in reverse. Besides, it was way too precious.”

The only way an experience like that could happen is through the support of Chaplin’s family – which Quint has.

“I’m now close friends with his granddaughter, Kiera, who is trying to preserve his legacy. She described how strict he was with his family and children and grandchildren, but family and home were essential ingredients of his life. Also I understand he was very sincere and very loving and very generous with his emotions and financially. I feel I have gotten to know him as a man and a composer.”

To be who he was and accomplish all he did, Chaplin had to be a dreamer. As he wrote in his auto-biography, “There are mystics who believe that our existence is a half-dream and that it is difficult to know where the dream ends and reality begins. Thus is was with me.” An idea that Quint can relate to.

“This is what I love. 50% of our lives we spend dreaming and so we don’t know what reality is. Certainly performing for me, especially in the last decade, has become a supernatural multi-dimensional experience where my physical body is on stage, but my soul and my mind are really elsewhere. I would equate performing to a dream.”

He concludes by paraphrasing another quote by the great filmmaker, “We think too much and we feel too little.”*

Photo of Philippe Quint by Isi Akahome/Courtesy of the Artist

*The full quote: “We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.”

The post Charlie Chaplin’s Music Makes Philippe Quint Smile appeared first on Cultural Attaché.

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

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Somers is the composer of the score for the currently playing Honey Boy. He also scored Captain Fantastic. Music fans know him as an essential collaborator with the band Sigur Rós. (He and the band’s Jónsi are partners.)

On Friday, CAP UCLA will present Dawson City: Frozen Time Live at the Theatre at the Ace Hotel. The score Somers wrote will be played live by Wild Up who will be joined by a female chorus from Tonality. (To view the trailer for the film, go here.)

Last week I spoke by phone with Somers about this project, his music and what long lost items of his might be interesting to dig up someday. Below are edited excerpts from that conversation.

When you first were approached about this project, what stood out to you as the most interesting things that would serve as inspiration for your writing?

Straight away when I first heard about it, it was a dream project. It was very up my alley. Working with f***ed up looking film footage that was lost and found and repurposed to tell a story.  It was in line to how I hear and see things for my music. It was a no-brainer.

How much of a fan of silent movies were you before you were introduced to this  story?

Not really. When I come across them I think they are really neat and cool, but I couldn’t say I was a fan. I knew Bill Morrison and was a fan of his work. His signature thing is he only works with archival footage.

The documentary tells the story of films that date back to the earliest days of cinema. Those films are then found in the 1970s and the story is told in this century. How did that vast expanse of time influence your approach to the music?

I wanted to create music that was inherently flawed. The story which Bill told me, which is quite sad, is Dawson City was the furtherest northern point that had a cinema. These prints would be shipped around and it was too expensive to send them back. No one knew what to do with them. That story informed the music.

I wanted to have this thing that you put so much care into it and then disregard it. I  tried to do that with the music. I did string and choir arrangements and dubbed them to microcassettes which destroys fidelity. Any chance I could get I tried to disregard the meaning of the music and  f*** it up. It was trying to mimic Dawson City. It burned down nine times and was rebuilt every time. People died and lost their homes. I tried to have the music have this creation and then almost be destroyed and then built up.

How then will an ensemble like Wild Up be able to recreate the sound you created for the film?

It’s hard to recreate it exactly. We’re going to get as close as we can. For me the notes of my music are only 50% of the work. So much is about the sound. It should be a nice blend of orchestra, choir, piano, vibraphones and a little bit f***ed up.

There is also a sound design track for the film. It was the first time Bill Morrison had used sound design. That will be treated as an instrument in the performance. Harmonically my music is so simple it leaves space for texture and sound.

Charlie Chaplin, perhaps the best-known of all silent movie stars, said in a letter he wrote in 1918, “It is always the unexpected that happens both in moving pictures and in real life.” Do you agree with him and what was the most unexpected thing that happened to you while collaborating on Dawson City: Frozen Time?

That’s a great question. I do agree with that sentiment. Art and life mimic each other all the time. I’m not sure the most unexpected thing. Every time I would send another version of the score, Bill would be, “It’s got to be darker. More low cellos and basses.” He wanted to feel the rock bottom of this town and the films.

If someone years from now was excavating land and they found some of your material, what would be something you’ve lost that might be fascinating for future generations?

That’s cool. I think some of my microcassette tapes. I’ve recorded since I was 14 and I was playing guitar and writing songs and archiving them. I had fourteen of these little cassettes. I’ve lost most of them. There’s all kinds of things on there and weird moments from my life growing up. I always kept that microcassette recorder around. That would be neat for people to find that stuff because it would sound pretty weird.

Photos of Alex Somers courtesy of CAP UCLA.

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