Legendary Guitarist Marc Ribot to Accompany Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Kid’ At Zankel

SARATOGA SPRINGS —The Arthur Zankel Music Center at Skidmore College will welcome legendary guitarist Marc Ribot for a live accompaniment to Charlie Chaplin’s 1921 silent film “The Kid” at 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 28. Ribot’s delicate and, at times, haunting solo guitar score contemporizes Chaplin’s work as a relevant story about our era’s economic and social conditions. Ribot will also perform a short solo set before the film. 

Chaplin’s first full-length feature, “The Kid,” remains an expressive masterwork of silent cinema. In it, Chaplin stars as his lovable Tramp character, this time raising an orphan (a remarkable young Jackie Coogan) he has rescued from the streets. 

Ribot’s score was commissioned by the New York Guitar Festival and premiered in 2010 at Merkin Hall. 

Ribot has released over 20 albums under his own name over a 30-year career, exploring everything from the pioneering jazz of Albert Ayler to the Cuban music of Arsenio Rodríguez. Rolling Stone points out that “Guitarist Marc Ribot helped Tom Waits refine a new, weird Americana on 1985’s ‘Rain Dogs,’ and since then, he’s become the go-to guitar guy for all kinds of roots-music adventurers: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Elvis Costello, John Mellencamp.” He has also recorded with Solomon Burke, John Lurie’s Lounge Lizards, Marianne Faithful, Norah Jones, The Black Keys, and many others. Ribot works regularly with Grammy Award-winning producer T Bone Burnett and New York composer John Zorn.

Tickets are available to the general public for $20 and at $5 for the Skidmore College community (students, faculty, staff, and alumni). Purchase online at https://www.tix.com/ticket-sales/zankel/7074/event/1379633, or call the box office at 518-580-5321 between 1 and 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday.