Posted in Jazz Notes on Apr 13th, 2008
New York City’s Museum of Modern Art opens an exhibition next week devoted to jazz and film scoring. Check out the list of movies they’ll be showing over the next few months–impressive. WNYC aired a show Friday morning on the topic that includes interviews with composer Johnny Mandel, musician Bill Kirchner, and…
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Posted in Shows on Apr 7th, 2008
Music has been an important part of the Disney formula ever since the studio began making films in the late 1920s, and the enormous success of the so-called “Magic Kingdom” has pushed many of its movie songs to the…
Posted in Jazz Notes, Videos on Dec 28th, 2007
On December 27, 1927, the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein musical Show Boat made its Broadway debut at the Ziegfield Theater. Show Boat, based on Edna Ferber’s novel, was one of the first musicals that wasn’t just a loose revue of unrelated songs; the songs in Show Boat actually helped establish characters and storylines. It also gave us songs like “Can’t Help Lovin Dat Man,” “Why Do I Love You,” “Bill,” and “Ol’ Man River.” The musical depicts life on the Mississippi, with a large cast of both white and African-American characters, and the song “Ol’ Man River,” which seeks to capture both the suffering of black laborers and the eternal spirit of the Mississippi…
Posted in Jazz Notes on Dec 1st, 2007
Previously on Night Lights: Don Ellis and The French Connection. It offers more than a taste of later, larger-ensemble Ellis, heard at the dawn of the 1970s…
Posted in Videos on Nov 25th, 2007
A few years ago I caught a late-1940s Robert Mitchum movie on AMC called The Big Steal. Mitchum played an Army lieutenant on the run in Mexico, trying to absolve himself of a stolen payroll for which he’d been framed. His feminine foil was Jane Greer, as a woman disillusioned and exploited by her playboy lover (portrayed by Patric Knowles). Rife with crackling dialogue and great south-of-the-border scenery, the film also hooked me with an epic chase scene (in which Greer, not Mitchum, is the driver), a progressive-for-its-time treatment of the leading lady and the Mexican police officers, and an engaging chemistry…
Posted in Jazz Notes on Nov 9th, 2007
A couple of years ago I did a Night Lights show about Oscar Brown Jr., a singer and songwriter I’d long admired for his compositional skills, his vocal verve, and his cultural and political activism. With his hip, cocksure, proto-rap delivery and tunes such as “Mr. Kicks,” “Forty Acres and a Mule,” and “Bid ‘Em In” that combined humor and strong social messages, he was a pioneer of early-1960s vocal jazz. At the time I felt Brown was undercelebrated for his accomplishments, both as an artist and as a figure of inspiration. Several months after we aired the program…
Posted in Jazz Notes on Oct 27th, 2007
From piano-noir master Ran Blake, just in time for Halloween–New England-area readers and listeners, take note:
Spiral Staircases
Ran’s fall student performance focuses on one of his favorite films, the psychological murder mystery Spiral Staircase. Fittingly, the show falls on Halloween…
Posted in Shows on Sep 10th, 2007
The Connection was a groundbreaking 1959 off-Broadway play from New York City’s Living Theater group, written by Jack Gelber, that cast jazz musicians as heroin addicts waiting for a score. Artists that passed through the play included pianist Freddie Redd (who composed the original score), alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks, and pianist Cecil Taylor. The Connection was made into a 1961 movie directed by Shirley Clarke, who would go on to…
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