Canadian film score composer Benoît Charest will bring his nine-piece jazz band to Tucson on Sunday, Feb. 28, for “The Triplets of Belleville,” a live performance of the soundtrack he penned for the 13-year-old animated film.
It’s the latest of the so-called “cine concert” genre to hit Tucson and one of two such events from UA Presents this season. The other is “Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage” on March 28, a co-production with Broadway in Tucson.
Tucson Symphony Orchestra in recent seasons has hosted several concerts centered on movies, including “Fantasia” in the 2014-15 season and “Pixar in Concert” last November. Next season, the orchestra will perform “Home Alone” over Thanksgiving weekend.
“I think it’s a very good outlet for musicians today,” Charest explained during a phone call from a Minnesota concert stop last week. “The total crumbling of media support sales is basically (making it) difficult for musicians to get decent earnings from their work. So a lot of people are going back on the road. You see all these old guys going back on the road in a revival. … I, as a musician, hope it won’t ever go away and that people will always be enticed by seeing real musicians playing in front of you.”
Charest said that adding the film element, especially in a project like his — centered on an animated film — also makes it enticing for younger audiences. He calls it a “cultural Trojan horse,” a way to expose younger audiences to music they might not seek out on their own.
“I think that’s why it works,” he said.
Charest created “The Triplets” show 18 months ago in his native Quebec, Canada, as a way to “get out of the house,” he joked. They did 10 shows in Canada then took the event to Los Angeles, where they met an agent that is booking the show around the United States.
So far, the response has surprised the composer, whose film credits include 2012’s “Upside Down” and the 2009 film “Polytechnique.”
“I am really surprised by the reaction,” he said, noting that the show has played to near sold-out halls in Canada and several American cities.
Here are three things you should know about “The Triplets of Belleville” concert:
- The music: “There’s a bit of 1920s, a bit of jazz hot music, a bit of more Château Élysée like waltzes and things like that. The score’s a bit jazzy and chase music from the Hollywood movies of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Basically a big pizza of all kinds of music,” Charest said.
- The movie: It was released in 2003 as a co-production by film companies in France, the United Kingdom, Belgium and Canada. The story is described as “unclassifiable”: it’s a musical, with comedy, drama, chase scenes and jazz era divas.
- Square-shouldered noir-era French mafia henchmen snag a wiry Tour de France cyclist and two others and spirit them away to Belleville. The cyclist’s grandmother, Madame Souza, and his puppy Bruno set out to retrieve him and end up joining with the Triplets of Belleville, a group of aging music hall singers and jazz-era divas. The New York Times called the film “a tour de force of ink-washed, crosshatched mischief, and unlikely sublimity.”
- The musicians: Charest has assembled a cast of well-known Québeçois jazz musicians for his Terrible Orchestre de Belleville. Ottawa Jazz Scene said that watching the musicians perform “was almost as much a ‘What will they do next?’ experience as it was musical.”
