One of the few complete concert performances of Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong , this live recording features the legendary jazz trumpeter and singer on an Australian tour in 1964, when he had already become an international superstar and a living symbol of 20th-century American culture. As a founding father of jazz he revolutionized the world of music and became one of the most influential artists and entertainers ever. The impressive structure of his melodic ideas and the radiant sonorities and flawless technique of his trumpet playing all marked him out as jazz's first soloist of genius. Louis Armstrong set new standards for swing feeling, improvisation, scat singing and command of his instrument, but also for stage presence and entertainment, providing a model for performers in virtually every field of jazz and on every conceivable instrument. With his All Stars sextet, which he formed in the wake of the Second World War, he acted as an ambassador for jazz, restlessly travelling the world. The present documentary was shot at a time when he succeeded in creating a song that was a minor miracle: Hello Dolly even displaced the Beatles from the number-one position in the charts in 1964, a fact of which Armstrong was unaware as he was touring at the time. Armstrong's associates -...
With the magnificent sets of the Quartier Latin in Giancarlo del Monaco's La Boheme as a backdrop, the Teatro Real presents an invigorating Latin jazz cross-pollination, featuring some of the world's greatest jazz fusionists: the veteran Cuban saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera and the creator of the "New Flamenco Sound", Spanish pianist Chano Dominguez. This vibrant tete a tete of two of Latin jazz's most talented musicians offers some of the best Latin jazz of our times. This concert fires up the screen with virtuosic and electrifying performances of some truly multi-dimensional jazz, coloured with salsa, flamenco, tango, bolero, African and other Latin music elements.
Live from St. Thomas's Church - the church for which Bach conceived most of his works - comes a concert performed by the man who introduced Bach to the world of Jazz and vice versa. In 1959, Jacques Loussier hit upon the idea that was to make his international reputation, by combining his interest in jazz with his love of J.S. Bach. He created his very own view of Bach, blending the most beautiful tunes of the Baroque master with an irresistibly swinging sound. Loussier's trio achieved the breakthrough to popular commercial success enjoyed by only a select few jazz musicians. In fifteen years, the group sold over six million albums. On the occasion of Loussier's 70th birthday, the ensemble performed its greatest hits - jazz arrangements of Bach, Debussy, Satie and Ravel - in Bach's "own" church in Leipzig for the first time.
Bonus features:
- Jacques Loussier in Conversation
One of the great legends in American music, the virtuoso saxophonist Charlie Parker – nicknamed Bird – created a new style of jazz and won equal fame as the king of the hipsters. Celebrating Bird – The Triumph of Charlie Parker is a revealing look at an enigmatic yet endlessly appealing man, who soared to the heights of creative freedom but couldn't beat a lifelong addiction to heroin, and it includes Parker's only surviving TV appearance playing Hot House. With Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Haynes, Jay McShann, Frank Morgan, Chan Parker and others.
Lady Day - The Many Faces of Billie Holiday invites viewers to see the many faces of this "dark lady of the sonnets", as one poet called her, and to appreciate her undying art more deeply. Most presentations feature Lady Day as the sad victim of hard times and drugs. The single fact of her life that matters above all others is that she was a great artist who, with Louis Armstrong, invented modern jazz singing. Mining a treasure trove of completely new information, the producers set the record straight – and beautifully. In a voice that is Billie-like in its rasping wiseness and its ring, stage and screen star Ruby Dee reads from Holiday’s autobiography Lady Sings the Blues .
Masters of American Music is an award-winning television series – as entertaining as it is educational and memorable – that celebrates a pantheon of the greatest innovators in jazz. Individual programmes trace the lives and works of master musicians who defined the course of America's classical music. From its birth in New Orleans to swing, the big bands, bebop, free jazz and beyond – all of it is explored with sensitivity and in unique depth.
Over 80 interviews were filmed in the making of the series. Featured artists come to life through these conversations,...
The Story of Jazz puts the crown on the Masters of American Music series. As entertaining as it is informative, this is a seamless array of performances, comments and compelling historic insight. This colourful tale of cross-cultural influences that produced a constantly evolving and enduring music is a rich 98-minute weave of sounds, rare film clips, stills and interviews. Never before have the filmed comments of so many important jazz artists been assembled for one project, and never before has the history of jazz been told as vividly and with such attention to historic detail.
Masters of American Music is an award-winning television series – as entertaining as it is educational and memorable – that celebrates a pantheon of the greatest innovators in jazz. Individual programmes trace the lives and works of master musicians who defined the course of America's classical music. From its birth in New Orleans to swing, the big bands, bebop, free jazz and beyond – all of it is explored with sensitivity and in unique depth.
Over 80 interviews were filmed in the making of the series. Featured artists come to life through these conversations, exciting rare performances, period footage and vintage photographs meticulously reproduced. Both the video and audio...
Through a more personal and conversational style of documentary,
Thelonious Monk – American Composer was the first fully rounded portrait of this terribly misunderstood man and musician. He was the pianistic ringleader of the bebop revolution and, after Duke Ellington, jazz' first major composer. Thelonious Sphere Monk – a most original talent – remained a highly productive musician after more than thirty years of musical activity and continued to be a growing artist, exploring his art and extending his range.
Masters of American Music is an award-winning television series – as entertaining as it is educational and memorable – that celebrates a pantheon of the greatest innovators in jazz. Individual programmes trace the lives and works of master musicians who defined the course of America's classical music. From its birth in New Orleans to swing, the big bands, bebop, free jazz and beyond – all of it is explored with sensitivity and in unique depth.
Over 80 interviews were filmed in the making of the series. Featured artists come to life through these conversations, exciting rare performances, period footage and vintage photographs meticulously reproduced. Both the video and audio content has been restored and remastered in...
The music documentary Play Your Own Thing provides a comprehensive history of European Jazz. It explores the origins of the US-influenced Jazz clubs after the Second World War, the first steps independent of American jazz and the various changes of direction that have repeatedly occurred in European jazz in the search for that "own voice" that European jazz musicians have helped to form. Featuring the great masters of European jazz such as Chris Barber, Jan Garbarek, Juliette Greco, Stefano Bollani and Till Bronner, to name but a few, the film provides a wealth of styles in Jazz. For his third documentary on jazz, film-maker Julian Benedikt travelled to a wide variety of European countries in search of an all-embracing documentation of European jazz music. His story telling is neither too sophisticated nor does he simply reproduce the known cliches, rather the movie engages its audience with very personal impressions of European jazz, past and present. Accompanied by rarely seen archival footage featuring such influencing American jazz legends as Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, this unique document offers a collection of sparkling musical gems from both sides of the Atlantic.
Bach meets Jazz! International musicians from the world of jazz and classical music assembled in the market place in Leipzig to celebrate the great master. The line up of performers could hardly be surpassed - it includes world-famous musicians from both genres, including Bobby McFerrin, the Jacques Loussier Trio, the King's Singers, Gil Shaham, the Turtle Island String Quartet and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig all of whom joined forces on this memorable day – exactly 250 years after the death of Johann Sebastian Bach in the city where he lived and composed some of his major works as St. Thomas Cantor. Bach's music is presented in the two-hour recording as extravagant arrangements of the composer's hits and the concert took place under the motto that the music of Bach "is still vital, is still contemporary, and is still very much universal". It proves its point resoundingly in one of the most enjoyable crossover programmes ever recorded.
