A surreal music video for David Bowie's single "Blackstar".
Presenting the world's greatest jazz singer accompanied by The Tommy Flanagan Trio.
Documentary about the Swedish clarinettist Putte Wickman featuring interviews and performances.
Live archive release from the Jazz legend. Thelonious Monk Paris 1969 is a fascinating and important late-career document of the legendary Jazz pianist and composer in performance with his Quartet at the Salle Pleyel concert hall in Paris, France on December 15, 1969. The concert also featured a surprise guest appearance from renowned drummer Philly Joe Jones. Filmed in Black & White.
Documentary film about the life and mysterious death of forgotten jazz arranger/composer Gary McFarland.
Django Reinhardt's music still looms as the standard to be attained some 50 years after his death.
Gino Vannelli - vocals; Damian Erskine - bass; Greg Goebel - keyboards & backing vocals; Jay Koder - guitar; Patrick Lamb - saxophone & backing vocals; Reinhardt Melz - drums; Dan Fornero - trumpet; Nick Lane - trombone; Melanie Taylor, Lamont Van Hook - background vocals; Special Guests: Joe Vannelli - keyboards; Bernie Williams - guitar Songs: 01. Introduction 02. Nightwalker; 03. I Just Wanna Stop 04. If I Should Lose This Love 05. Appaloosa 06. A Good Thing 07. Wild Horses 08. The Last Days Of Summer 09. Black Cars 10. Living Inside Myself 11. Brother to Brother 12. People Gotta Move Bonus: Canto None So Beautiful Recorded in 2013.
Madrid, Spain, June 30th, 2016. Rafael and José Luis jam a crazy one-day trip in search of the city's jazz scene, meeting the musicians, the club owners, the audience, the true believers who tell the story from the beginning, back in the 1950s, until the last breath of this memorable day.
Alvin Queen is one of the best jazz drummers of all time. A child prodigy, he played with the greatest masters (Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Pharaoh Sanders... ) He is also a very nice person who has a lot of wisdom to transmit. He shows it beautifully in this first episode of "Seeds of Success".
Shot in New York, Cape Town, St Helena and the Atlantic Ocean, Sathima's Windsong, is a lyrical portrait of South African jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin. In her Chelsea Hotel apartment, home for over thirty years, she patches together her journeys, from apartheid's 'pattern of brokenness', to a chance meeting and recording with Duke Ellington in Paris, to making a life in New York. The narrative of her journeys are inter-woven with her music and the musings of folks who know her work. Like her haunting song, Windsong, the film is a meditation on displacement, exile and belonging.
Common sense says you can't make a living in America playing avant-garde improvisational jazz. But Ken Vandermark does it anyway. Among musicians, Vandermark's work ethic is almost mythic. The Chicago reed player has released over 100 albums with nearly 40 ensembles, spends over eight months per year on the road, and lives every other waking moment composing, arranging, performing—and trying to discipline his two hyperactive canines. Though Vandermark was the recipient of a 1999 MacArthur genius grant, he still spends most of his life in smoky clubs and low-budget recording studios, hoping people will plunk down hard-earned cash to hear his wholly non-commercial music. Following the artful cinéma vérité style of the internationally acclaimed Sheriff (Work Series #1), Musician (Work Series #2) forgoes all interviews and voice-overs. It is a fly-on-the-wall time capsule that expertly captures every subtle sound and texture of this most American of art forms.
The concert captured on William "Count" Basie's entry in the "must-own" audio/video Jazz Icons series comes from the vaults of Swedish Television. Modern eyes and ears are whisked to April 24, 1962, with Basie conducting his Atomic-era orchestra.
Sarah Vaughan features the "Divine One" in her prime, wrapping her sultry voice around jazz standards such as "Lover Man", "Misty" and "I Got Rhythm and soaring on popular showtunes such as "Over The Rainbow" and "Maria". One of the greatest voices of the 20th Century, her renditions of songs by Harold Arlen, Leonard Bernstein, Johnny Burke, the Gershwins and Stephen Sondheim are pure diva magic. These three performances demonstrate why Sarah Vaughan is invariably mentioned in the same breath as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday.
In King for Two Days, filmmaker Noah Hutton chronicles drummer Dave King's (The Bad Plus, Happy Apple) two-night concert at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, featuring five of the groups he drums in. Through rehearsals, interviews with the musicians, and concert excerpts, a world emerges where the concept of the band is held above the need for individual showmanship, a rarity in jazz.