Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.
Made on a wind-up Bolex camera, The Sound of Seeing announced the arrival of 21-year-old filmmaker Tony Williams. Based around a painter and a composer wandering the city (and beyond), the film meshes music and imagery to show the duo taking inspiration from their surroundings.
Vipal Monga's first feature-length documentary chronicles an unprecedented series of concerts performed in February 2005 by the legendary jazz composer Lawrence D. Butch Morris. The concerts were in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Conduction, Butch's revolutionary technique for live music-making. Butch put on 44 performances in 28 days with 85 musicians pulled from all across New York's musical community. Along with footage from these remarkable concerts that span a full range of musical styles from big band jazz to funk to electronic and symphonic works. The documentary features some of the leading lights of the New York creative-music community, including Henry Threadgill, JD Allen, Brandon Ross, Graham Haynes, Howard Mandel, and Greg Tate. Although the film provides unique insight into New York's vibrant avant-garde music scene,
The young American Pablo Menéndez came to Cuba to study Music at the National School of Art. Here he formed a family and became one more Cuban. Member of the Sound Experimentation Group of ICAIC and promoter of the teaching of the electric guitar in Cuba, he is, together with his group Mezcla, one of our most original musicians.
Between segregation and cosmic revelation, The Magic City traces the birth of Sun Ra, where a city becomes myth and a man, a galaxy.
A portrait of inspirational jazz drummer and teacher Art Blakey with Dizzy Gillespie, many pupils including Wayne Shorter, the Marsalis brothers, and a surprising new generation of musicians and dancers.
Combining footage unseen since WWI with original scores from the era, this film tells the story of Noble Sissle's incredible journey that spans "The Harlem Hellfighters" of World War I, Broadway Theatre, the Civil Rights movement, and decades of Black cultural development.
San Francisco's North Beach in the 50's - A mix of jazz, poetry and art - The Beach recreates the atmosphere that prevailed through first-hand accounts from the actual "players" along with photographs and artwork from that vibrant time.
Tenor saxophonist Jimmy McGary was a major presence in the Cincinnati music scene from the 1950s until his death in the early ’90s. With music rooted in Bebop with a progressive slant, the Jazz legend was a session player for King Records and released his first album as a bandleader — The First Time (with a quartet that included pianist Pat Kelly) — in 1979. McGary’s spirit and legacy have lived on well after his passing and well beyond Cincinnati, as evidenced in this new documentary film.
Imagine an AM Radio Station with a dawn to dusk license that played nothing but jazz and comedy records. Did I mention it FLOATED in the Ohio River and changed the culture of a Community? The history of Cincinnati Jazz is long, wide, diverse and in the case of WNOP sometimes beyond belief. Saxophonist turned filmmaker Christopher Braig's second Film will focus on the people, music, and cities that kept "The Jazz Ark" sailing for 42 years from 1968 to 2000.
Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. […] they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen -- through King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. […] Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. […] Image and sound are two different things -- that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand. In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, or better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers -- that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."
Cuba Jazz
A documentary featuring archive footage to celebrate the 100th birth of jazz legend Louis Armstrong.
A music documentary made with Sun Ra.
Chart-topping jazz trumpeter Chris Botti and special guests performed two star-studded concerts at the historic Boston Symphony Hall with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops on September 18 and 19, 2008. Special guests include Josh Groban, Yo-Yo Me, John Mayer, Katharine McPhee, Lucia Micarelli, Sting and Steven Tyler.
This Emmy-nominated TV special highlights rare performance footage filmed between 1968 and 1969 at various US venues and locations, including the Westbury Music Fair, The Village Gate, and RCA Studios in New York City. Also featured are candid and personal interviews with Nina herself, revealing her unique views on music and life -- all expressed with her trademark intensity.
Diana Krall | Live at the Montreal Jazz Festival
Recorded live at Open Theater East, Tokyo, Japan on July 25, 1993. Keith Jarrett piano - Gary Peacock bass - Jack De Johnette drums /// 1. In Your Own Sweet Way 2. Butch And Butch 3. Basin Street Blues 4. Solar 5. Ex-tension 6. If I Were A Bell 7. I Fall In Love Too Easily 8. Oleo 9. Bye Bye Blackbird 10. The Cure 11. I Thought About You
Belgian jazz is enjoying a renaissance, driven by artists mixing jazz and electronic music. Around the Volta in Brussels, groups like Echt! and Tukan are reinventing the genre and exporting this ‘Brussels Sound’. This Jam documentary explores the effervescence of Belgian jazz and its international impact.
A Film About Kids and Music is a project arising from a music class. Conducted by Joan Chamorro, the big band brings together children between 6 and 18 years old, around a classic jazz repertoire with lots of swing, which gained the public’s attention and sold-out some of the most important music auditoriums in Spain.