jazz on film
Charlie Haden with Ornette Coleman
Once is a mistake, twice is an arrangement, three times is Jazz!
Louis Armstrong said "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." So, don't ask. Watch and listen to the infectious beats booming in Jazz on Film, a sublime seven-day season co-presented with the 2009 Melbourne International Jazz Festival.
We look back on a rich musical career spanning fifty years in the premiere of Charlie Haden Rambling Boy, Reto Caduff's intimate documentary exploring the instinctive, imaginative approach that has long been Haden's guiding philosophy in life and music. The jazz legend himself will be present at the screening for a Q&A session.
Then we travel back to 1989, when renowned photographer and filmmaker Bruce Weber charted Chet Baker's rise and fall in Let's Get Lost. In his 1950s heyday, Baker epitomised West Coast "cool jazz"; by the time of filming, Baker's matinee idol looks had been ravaged by heroine abuse and Weber's subject had become a hollow-cheeked shadow of his former self.
Cut to 1974, as space-age jester, shaman-philosopher, avant-jazz keyboardist Sun Ra lands his spaceship in Oakland and disembarks on a musical odyssey in Sun Ra: Space is the Place.
Rewind to 1960 and we are swinging to Jazz on a Summer's Day, a documentary capturing all the cool vibes of the famous Newport Jazz Festival.
Finally, we arrive in 1958 where Henry Mancini's electrifying jazz score guides us through the criminal underbelly of a Mexican border town in Orson Welles' seedy film noir piece Touch of Evil.
Join us for a freewheeling ride through time and remember: no questions. As Miles Davis said: "I'll play it first and tell you what it is later." Later you'll be too jazzmatazzed to care.
Jazz on Film is screening from Sunday 26 April to Saturday 2 May, 2009. Click here for all the details.
Published Thursday, 16 April 2009
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