Juicy and jammed with side men and side dishes, “The Jazz Baroness" has all the meat and the trimmings that make it a thanks-worthy special this holiday season on Nov. 25 on HBO2.
And what better to sip at this service than vintage Rothschild.
That's what viewers get in this un-be-bop--believable docu which details the Jew and the Monk: the backbeat of Baroness Pannonica ("Nica") Rothschild, whose fiscal and aesthetic support of the ascetically surnamed music master Thelonious Monk provided jazz with one of those legends that scats a scale all its own.
Round midnight, long after the 90-minute film has faded from the screen at 9:30 p.m., finger-snappin' questions demand a second look -- HBO2 is rebroadcasting the docu Nov. 29 and 30 -- at how this improv relationship was imperiled by the prejudices of the time but managed to persist.
Filmmaker Hannah Rothschild is on familiar -- and family -- turf with this brilliant biopic which accords the two subjects the tea and symphony their story so much demands.
The baroness's great-niece has made a great piece here, in concert with her other accomplishments as writer/journalist/director. Her own bio includes the biography she is also writing about the topics at hand -- and at ear -- in the HBO2 offering.
But such fertile ground this “Jazz Baroness," whose quirky kicks -- serving Scotch from a teapot; practicing magic tricks learned from scientific prestidigitator Albert Einstein -- seem quid-pro-quo for the relationship she formed with the pro jazz world.
If nothing else, the “Jazz Baroness" played life like a jam session. “That is exactly what it was like," muses Hannah about the royal muse and her musician.
She was indeed a Rothschild -- taking a number in the long line of accomplished members of the legendary European banking dynasty whose cachet has been cash-and-carry for a number of films, dramas and even a musical -- but one who banked on her own intuition.
“She dared to be different," concedes Hannah.
Surrounded in her living quarters by 300 cats, it was 301 who was the coolest cat of all -- Monk, who, in his later leaner years, shared the baroness's New York living space.
And what better to sip at this service than vintage Rothschild.
That's what viewers get in this un-be-bop--believable docu which details the Jew and the Monk: the backbeat of Baroness Pannonica ("Nica") Rothschild, whose fiscal and aesthetic support of the ascetically surnamed music master Thelonious Monk provided jazz with one of those legends that scats a scale all its own.
Round midnight, long after the 90-minute film has faded from the screen at 9:30 p.m., finger-snappin' questions demand a second look -- HBO2 is rebroadcasting the docu Nov. 29 and 30 -- at how this improv relationship was imperiled by the prejudices of the time but managed to persist.
Filmmaker Hannah Rothschild is on familiar -- and family -- turf with this brilliant biopic which accords the two subjects the tea and symphony their story so much demands.
The baroness's great-niece has made a great piece here, in concert with her other accomplishments as writer/journalist/director. Her own bio includes the biography she is also writing about the topics at hand -- and at ear -- in the HBO2 offering.
But such fertile ground this “Jazz Baroness," whose quirky kicks -- serving Scotch from a teapot; practicing magic tricks learned from scientific prestidigitator Albert Einstein -- seem quid-pro-quo for the relationship she formed with the pro jazz world.
If nothing else, the “Jazz Baroness" played life like a jam session. “That is exactly what it was like," muses Hannah about the royal muse and her musician.
She was indeed a Rothschild -- taking a number in the long line of accomplished members of the legendary European banking dynasty whose cachet has been cash-and-carry for a number of films, dramas and even a musical -- but one who banked on her own intuition.
“She dared to be different," concedes Hannah.
Surrounded in her living quarters by 300 cats, it was 301 who was the coolest cat of all -- Monk, who, in his later leaner years, shared the baroness's New York living space.
