StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: A jazz film mini-festival (shutdown edition), part 2

This week, it's another installment in our mini-festival of jazz films that can be viewed for free online. (You can see last week's post with part one here.)

Today's edition features three films about pianists, starting up top with Music In The Key Of Oscar, a 1995 documentary about Oscar Peterson.

After the jump, you can see the film titled simply Earl "Fatha" Hines, filmed in 1975 to coincide with Hines' 70th birthday.

Next up, it's Mal: A Portrait Of Mal Waldron, a 1997 documentary about the late pianist who played with major jazz figures including Billie Holiday, Eric Dolphy, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, and more.

That's followed by Ronnie Scott and All That Jazz, a documentary produced in 1989 to celebrate 30 years of London's long-running jazz club (which continues to operate today) and its founder and namesake.

The next-to-last film, Big Ben: Ben Webster in Denmark offers a look at Webster's life as an expatriate living in Europe in 1971.

The final video is The Breath Courses Through Us, a 2013 film about the free jazz group New York Art Quartet, with John Tchicai (saxophone), Roswell Rudd (trombone), Milford Graves (drums), and Reggie Workman (bass), recounting the group's origins and brief initial run in the mid-Sixties and their reunion 35 years later.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Jazz documentary film festival, part 3

As we head into the dog days of summer, things still are relatively quiet on the touring-acts-coming-to-St. Louis-soon front, and so this week, StLJN offers a third installment of this year's online mini-festival of documentary films of interest to jazz fans. 

First up via the video embed above is Earl "Fatha" Hines, a documentary about the pianist made in 1975 for Britain's ITV television channel. Filmed mostly after hours at the Blues Alley nightclub in Washington DC, it was described at the time by the International Herald Tribune as "the greatest jazz film ever made."

After the jump, you can see Inside Out In The Open, subtitled "An Expressionist Journey Into The World Known As Free Jazz." Made in 2008 by producer/director Alan Roth, it features performance footage and interviews with creative musicians including the Art Ensemble of Chicago's Joseph Jarman, pianist Matthew Shipp, bassist William Parker, trumpeter and former St. Louisan Baikida Carroll, and many more.

That's followed by three films offering biographies of individual musicians: Mal: A Portrait Of Mal Waldron, a 1997 documentary about the New York pianist; Jim Hall: A Life In Progress, the story of one of the most highly esteemed guitarists in jazz; and The Allen Toussaint Touch, a 2006 BBC documentary about the New Orleans pianist, songwriter and producer.

The final film today is The Land Where the Blues Began, a 1979 documentary by historian, musicologist, and folklorist Alan Lomax that traces the origins of the blues and helps explain how it is foundational for jazz, rock, country, soul, and American music in general.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...

Sunday Session: July 30, 2017

Mal Waldron

Here's the roundup of various music-related items of interest that have appeared in StLJN's inbox over the past week:

* Jimmy Heath: A Little Bird Told Me (Jazz Times)
* Such Sweet Thunder: inside Duke Ellington's literary world (Jazzwise)
* REVIEW: Mary Halvorson Octet at the Village Vanguard in New York (London Jazz News)
* Mary Halvorson Makes Village Vanguard Debut (DownBeat)
* Scott Hanley signs on as jazz station GM (Current.org)
* The night I drove George Melly home from the Cricklewood Tavern (The Guardian)
* Why Vinyl’s Boom Is Over (Wall Street Journal)
* The Ultimate Playlist Of Banned Wedding Songs (FiveThirtyEight.com)
* New Orleans music legend Dr. John reflects on a lifetime of song and adversity (San Diego Union Tribune)
* The 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women (NPR)
* Fascinating Algorithm: Dan Tepfer's Player Piano Is His Composing Partner (NPR)
* Q&A with David Lynch’s Music Collaborator Dean Hurley – Part 1: Working On and “Protecting the Experience” of Twin Peaks: The Return (SynchBlog.com)
* Q&A with David Lynch’s Music Collaborator Dean Hurley – Part 2: Being “Open Creatively” and “Knowing When to Walk Away” (SynchBlog.com)
* After Surviving Lightning Strike, Vocalist Evans Prepares for Comeback (DownBeat)
* How SoundCloud's broken business model drove artists away (TheVerge.com)
* A New Job At Wesleyan, A New Album And A New Direction For Drummer Tyshawn Sorey (Hartford Courant)
* Keith Richards says the Rolling Stones will record new, original music 'very shortly' (New York Daily News)
* How Southern-Soul Survivor Don Bryant Finally Got His Second Chance (Rolling Stone)
* Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen Tours With Young ‘Nightflyers’ (Wall Street Journal)
* Free at Last: Mal Waldron’s ecstatic minimalism. (The Nation)
* Hippies, Guns, and LSD: The San Francisco Rock Band That Was Too Wild For the Sixties (CollectorsWeekly.com)
* Changing the face of American orchestras, one player at a time (Cincinnati.com)
* Alan Lomax’s Timeless American Recordings Find a New Audience (Bandcamp.com)
* The Top Ten Most Overrated Drummers Of All Time (TheZReview.com)
* A Fearless and Kind Leader—Remembering Geri Allen (1957-2017) (New Music Box)
* UK Music chief warns of 'perfect storm' facing music industry (MusicWeek.com)
* Roscoe Mitchell Captures the Eternal Now on Remarkable New Album (Village Voice)
* 45 45s That Changed The World (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* What is Jack DeJohnette's Native American Spirit Name? (WBGO)
* Orrin Evans on Joining the Bad Plus (Jazz Times)
* Angels and Demons at Play: Jim Knipfel on Reclaiming Sun Ra’s Legacy (BelieverMag.com)
* The Jazz & Blues Art Box — instant collection, rare data trove (Jazz Beyond Jazz)
* The sound illusion that makes Dunkirk so intense (Vox.com)
* How I Taught My Computer to Write Its Own Music (Nautil.us)
* The reissue racket: how many more ‘classic’ albums will be repackaged? (The Guardian)
* Whatever Happened to Indie Rock? (Popmatters.com)
* Watch the Making of a Hand-Crafted Violin, from Start to Finish, in a Beautifully-Shot Documentary (OpenCulture.com)