News

Timely announcements from the jazz industry courtesy of All About Jazz. Scan featured articles & news and blog feeds.

TV / FILM February 19, 2021

Mini-Jazz Documentary 'In The Zone: Rick Kilburn,' A Hollywood Finalist

“When I was 12 my father introduced me to Scott LaFaro and when my Dad asked me, ‘what do you want to do?’ I pointed at Scott and said, ’that,’” says jazz bassist/producer Rick Kilburn. “The pursuit of music is basically the pursuit of oneself...a very spiritual undertaking,” reflects the bassist. “I strive to occupy my physical body with my spirit body at a minimum ratio of 51% spirit, to 50% physical body. That’s a good starting point to strive ...
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TV / FILM February 17, 2021

Resurrection! Legendary Percussionist Airto Moreira & The Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Two powerful forces in the world of jazz come together in Resurrection! Airto Moreira and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Airto Moreira is a world-renowned jazz drummer and percussionist from Brazil, who exhibited great talent at a young age. In his twenties he traveled to the U.S.A. in pursuit of Flora Purim, the woman with whom he had fallen in love, who had left Brazil to sing Bossa Nova with saxophonist Stan Getz. Over the years, Airto became a major ...
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TV / FILM January 30, 2021

Norwegian Charlie Parker Documentary

TV / FILM January 22, 2021

Documentary: Bird in K.C.

Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City, Kan., in 1920. When he was 7, his family moved to Kansas City, Mo. In fifth grade, Parker began playing the saxophone in school after the city put in force a music-education program. As he progressed, his mother bought him an alto saxophone in a pawn shop for $40. At the time, vice thrived in Kansas City. Despite Prohibition, the city's mayor and bosses allowed virtually everything that was illegal elsewhere to be ...
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TV / FILM January 2, 2021

Young Girls of Rochefort, 1967

What better way to start the new year than watching a pristine print of The Young Girls of Rochefort? Directed by Jacques Demy, the music was composed by Michel Legrand to Demy's lyrics, and the choreography was by Norman Maen. It was a followup to Demy and Legrand's Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). The film-musical takes place in Rochefort, an actual town along the west coast of France. During the summer of '66, a caravan of trucks arrives in the town ...
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TV / FILM December 25, 2020

Rocco and His Brothers, 1960

Today is the start of my annual two-week holiday visit with great film. Having spent much of my youth in the Museum of Modern Art's basement screening theater with my movie-loving artist father, watching old films with him late at night, and having taken a couple of screenwriting classes, film is another one of my passions. Think of this two-week period as cinematic jazz or music to the eyes. What both jazz and great cinema have in common is poetry. ...
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TV / FILM December 25, 2020

Girl With a Suitcase, 1961

Girl With a Suitcase is one of my favorite Claudia Cardinale films. There's a unsettled quality about her that haunts. The post-neorealist film was directed by Valerio Zurlini, a lesser-known but superb Italian director. Among his best films are The Girls of San Frediano (1955) and Violent Summer (1959). But I chose Girl With a Suitcase because of Cardinale's childlike innocence and the gentle quality of the 16-year old (Jacques Perrin) who falls for her. With the success of Sophia ...
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TV / FILM December 25, 2020

Two Women, 1960

After Vittorio De Sica's Two Women was released and favorably reviewed in 1960, two things became clear. First, Italy still had a stomach for revisiting the horrors unleashed on the country by fascists and Nazis up until the last months of the war less than 20 years earlier. To its credit, Italy had been wrestling with its role and outcome since 1945, when Roberto Rossellini's Open City appeared in cinemas. Second, Sophia Loren had become the country's most remarkable and ...
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