See This: Silent Film, Live Jazz
By Alexander Hough in Arts & Entertainment on Aug 23, 2010 3:40PM
Photo from the Louis website
Louis, set in New Orleans in 1907, is an almost entirely fictional story about a 6-year-old Louis Armstrong (Anthony Coleman) as he discovers the trumpet and begins his revolutionary career. The crux of the plot is Louis's encounter with Grace (Shanti Lowry), whose baby, Jasmine, bears more than a passing resemblance to the evil gubernatorial candidate Judge Perry (Jackie Earle Haley).
Pritzker was working on another film about an early jazz legend, Buddy Bolden (Bolden! will be released in 2011), when he saw a screening of the Charlie Chaplin silent film City Lights with live musical accompaniment by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The event inspired him to explore the subject of jazz's origins using that same format, producing a sort of companion piece to the more conventional Bolden!
To help with the project, Pritzker enlisted Zsigmond to produce the beautifully washed-out, not-quite-black-and-white aesthetic and Marsalis to handle music duties. Marsalis’s 10-piece band and classical pianist Cecile Licad will give a live performance of a varied score consisting of music by Marsalis, 19th-century American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Jelly Roll Morton, Johannes Brahms, Frederic Chopin, Duke Ellington, and Charles Mingus.
The film is rated R, due to extreme amounts of profanity. Just kidding - that was a silent movie joke. It's rated R because there are lots of boobs. In any case, children under 17 won't be allowed in without a parent or guardian.
Wednesday at 8:00 p.m., Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan, $30-$95
View the trailer after the jump.