Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra: Silent Classics with Neil Brand

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google Plus
• Email

One Week (1920) starring Buster Keaton
Oliver Twist (1922) starring Jackie Coogan and Lon Chaney

Neil Brand presenter
Joanna MacGregor conductor
Matthew Fairclough sound projection

Brighton Philharmonic joins forces with Neil Brand – improvising pianist, film historian and composer – in this exciting performance of silent film and live music.

A series of TV documentaries on the history of film music, along with his own plays, have established him as the most expert of film aficionados, whether extolling the brilliance of his beloved Laurel and Hardy, or the expressionism of Fritz Lang. For the last thirty years Neil has played at the Barbican and the BFI National Theatre, and at festivals throughout the world, including Australia and New Zealand, Scandinavia, and in Italy, where he has inaugurated the School of Music and Image. Neil Brand’s profound knowledge of this most radical era of movie-making has enthralled audiences, and here he introduces Buster Keaton’s hilarious One Week – whose final train images, as Buster is trying to transport his home, are unforgettable – and his own 70-minute score to Oliver Twist, made in 1922.

Jackie Coogan was Hollywood’s first child actor. He starred Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, then made Oliver Twist the following year, when he was eight. He had a long career; he devoted himself to charity work and to ‘Coogan’s Law’, protecting child actors. He remained friends with the great actor Lon Chaney, who – apart from playing Fagin – is known as The Phantom of the Opera.