The 2025-2026 St. Alban’s Sacred Arts Series opens with internationally-acclaimed organist and improviser Jason Roberts accompanying the 1925 comedy The Gold Rush, starring Charlie Chaplin. A reception will follow and childcare is available.

Chaplin drew inspiration from photographs of the Klondike Gold Rush as well as from the story of the Donner Party who, when snowbound in the Sierra Nevada, were driven to cannibalism or eating leather from their shoes. Chaplin, who believed tragedies and comedies were not far from each other, decided to combine these stories of deprivation and horror in comedy. He decided that his famous rogue figure should become a gold-digger who joins a brave optimist determined to face all the pitfalls associated
with the search for gold, such as sickness, hunger, cold, loneliness or the possibility that he may at any time be attacked by a grizzly.

Jason Roberts is a winner of the American Guild of Organists National Competition in Organ Improvisation, and keeps an active recital schedule and enjoys accompanying silent films