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Documentary: Art Blakey
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Dick Fontaine remains one of the world's finest music documentarians. The British filmmaker also has had a knack for identifying major trends early and capturing them in their nascent form. Among his subjects have been the Beatles (filmed four days after Ringo joined the band at Liverpool's Cavern club in 1962), Ornette Coleman (1966), Sonny Rollins (1968) and hip-hop (1984). In all, he has made more than 40 films and his subjects have included James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Jean Shrimpton, ...
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CBS News Eyewitness: The New Beat, 1962
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
On November 21, 1962, at the height of the new youthful presidency of John F. Kennedy, a bossa nova concert was held at New York's Carnegie Hall. The bossa nova had already become a hit in the U.S. thanks to Stan Getz's Jazz Samba released in April of that year. The purpose of the autumn event was to expose the audience to the wider expressions of bossa nova as part of a cultural exchange program. The music had been discovered ...
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Documentary: The Beach Boys
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
For those growing up in the U.S. in the early 1960s, no other group better expressed the essence of summer than the Beach Boys. Their music and the smell of Coppertone suntan lotion still takes me back. Surf rock pre-dated the group, having been launched in 1960 by the Ventures' Walk—Don't Run. A surge of surf bands followed in 1961 that included the Bel-Airs, Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, the Carnations and Steve Rowe and the Furys. After the Beach Boys ...
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The Harborfields High School Jazz Band celebrates community in premiering Alan Ferber's arrangement of Abdullah Ibrahim's 'The Wedding'
Source:
All About Jazz
In a time when isolation and distancing seemed to define school settings, the Harborfields High School Jazz Band sought to cut against the grain and promote the joys inherent in the communal nature of music and creative expression. In early 2021, the band’s director—veteran educator and noted jazz journalist Dan Bilawsky—decided to follow through on a long-held ambition to commission an arrangement of Abdullah Ibrahim’s “The Wedding” from three-time GRAMMY-nominated composer/arranger/trombonist Alan Ferber. The beautiful results of Ferber’s writing were ...
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Jazz/Big Band Feature Film 'knights Of Swing' Arrives To Vimeo On Demand March 25
Source:
1888 Media
The Knights of Swing, LLC and E3 Music Productions have announced the March 25 Vimeo On Demand release of Knights of Swing, a feature length film powered by an incredible cast and crew of dreamers and believers. Set in 1947, tracing the challenges, disappointments and successes of six high school boys, and the girls who join them to form a really swingin’ big band. With the action set in Lynwood, CA (at “Castle High”), the story follows an inclusive group ...
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Jazz From Sixty-One at the Monroe
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
On Thursday, September 15, 1960, at 10:00 p.m. in New York, CBS aired Jazz From Sixty-One on national TV. The half-hour show was broadcast from the network's Studio 61, housed at the Monroe Theatre at 1456 First Avenue, at East 76th Street. The Monroe was one of the largest theaters built on Manhattan’s Upper East Side by an indie theater operator in the early 1920s. First opened in January 1926, CBS took it over for its Studio 61 in 1951, ...
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Jazz on TV: Don Elliott and Hal McKusick
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Yesterday, Jim Eigo sent along a terrific video that Evan Spring posted on the Jazz Research List. The video had been up at YouTube since 2014 and features an episode from a WCBS-TV series in New York called American Musical Theatre. The hour-long show aired from 1959 to 1965—a period considered by many to be the golden age of arts coverage on TV by the CBS network and individual CBS stations. Each week, AMT pulled back the curtain on a ...
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Brubeck and Mingus in 'All Night Long' (1962)
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Before big-beat pop and blues rock became the rage in London in 1963, jazz was still hip music for young adults. In 1961, All Night Long was filmed in London and released the following year. The jazz-themed neo-noir drama directed by Basil Dearden starred a range of British and American actors: Patrick McGoohan (Danger Man, The Prisoner), Marti Stevens, Paul Harris, Keith Michell, Richard Attenborough and Betsy Blair. The story is a reboot of Shakespeare's Othello and is set in ...
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