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More to Jazz Than "Anything Goes" Music
Director Giuseppe Tornatore is known for having an eye for faces -- not in the narrow all-American sense of “beauty," but rather faces of all shapes and sizes that leave an impression long after you see them.
Where the masterful Italian doesn't get his due is in the sound department, or more specifically, with music. Again, not so much the straight-up fare that passes for popular music, but from jovial riffs to haunting strains that also leave an impression long after you hear them. Case in point is Tornatore's 1998 epic “The Legend of 1900," which has as one of its many subplots the seminal days of jazz and its quick rise to mainstream acceptance. In one scene trumpet player Max Tooney (Pruit Taylor Vince) auditions for a playing gig aboard a transatlantic steamship and plays a chutzpah-laden piece that leaves the otherwise surly harbour master (Niall O'Brien) in total awe.
When the latter asks the former the title of the piece, the lazy-eyed trumpeter merely shrugs. This causes O'Brien's character to declare, “If you don't know what to call it, you call it jazz!"
And that, for many people, is the rub with the form of music being celebrated and reinvented this week in the Royal City. Seen by some as a catch-all for orphaned riffs and arrangements from nearly every other type of music, the perceived “anything goes" element of jazz is often its biggest knock.
Where the masterful Italian doesn't get his due is in the sound department, or more specifically, with music. Again, not so much the straight-up fare that passes for popular music, but from jovial riffs to haunting strains that also leave an impression long after you hear them. Case in point is Tornatore's 1998 epic “The Legend of 1900," which has as one of its many subplots the seminal days of jazz and its quick rise to mainstream acceptance. In one scene trumpet player Max Tooney (Pruit Taylor Vince) auditions for a playing gig aboard a transatlantic steamship and plays a chutzpah-laden piece that leaves the otherwise surly harbour master (Niall O'Brien) in total awe.
When the latter asks the former the title of the piece, the lazy-eyed trumpeter merely shrugs. This causes O'Brien's character to declare, “If you don't know what to call it, you call it jazz!"
And that, for many people, is the rub with the form of music being celebrated and reinvented this week in the Royal City. Seen by some as a catch-all for orphaned riffs and arrangements from nearly every other type of music, the perceived “anything goes" element of jazz is often its biggest knock.
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