About this Event
Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Elvin Jones are well known figures in the jazz world, but they also graced cinema history in rarely screened short films. Each film captures a unique moment in the stylistic development of jazz and cinema throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on its Reserve Film and Video collection, the Library for the Performing Arts presents an evening screening of these portrait films that feature the legendary jazz figures.
Ellington and his orchestra play lightly fictionalized versions of themselves in Black and Tan Fantasy (1929). In collaboration with the experimental filmmaker Dudley Murphy, the film is a dazzling depiction of the jazz club scene during the Harlem Renaissance. Black and Tan Fantasy was added to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2015. Dizzy Gillespie (1964) blends concert footage and direct interviews where the charismatic Gillespie discusses his philosophies on the trumpet and approach to composition in Les Blank’s verite-style documentary. Finally, Different Drummer: Elvin Jones (1979), covers everything from Jones’ childhood, his beginnings in jazz, his celebrated work with John Coltrane, to a breakdown of his drumming style.
Join us for this program of screenings to see jazz history come to live, presented by the Music and Recorded Sound Division at the Library for the Performing Arts.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division, The New York Public Library
SEATING POLICY | Programs are free and open to all, but registration is requested. Check-in line forms 45 minutes before the advertised start time. Registered guests are given priority check-in 15 to 30 minutes before start time. Five minutes before the advertised start time, all seats are released, regardless of registration, to our patrons in the stand-by line. If you arrive after the program starts, you will be seated at the discretion of our front-of-house staff.
STANDBY LINE | If registration is sold out or has ended, do not fret! We welcome you to come to the Library regardless of registration status and wait in our standby line, which forms 45 minutes before the advertised start time. Five minutes before the program starts, all remaining seats are released. While this is not guaranteed, we will do our best to get you into any of our programs.
ASSISTIVE LISTENING AND ASL | ASL interpretation and real-time (CART) captioning available upon request. Please submit your request at least two weeks in advance by emailing [email protected].
FIERSTEIN LAB POLICY | Please note that any unoccupied seat will be released five minutes before the show begins and holding seats for anyone beyond that is prohibited. There is no food or drink allowed inside the venue.
AUDIO/VIDEO RECORDING | Programs may be photographed and recorded by and at the discretion of the Library for the Performing Arts and will post signs indicating as such. If you would prefer your image not be captured, please let us know and we can seat you accordingly. Attending any program indicates your consent to being filmed/photographed and your consent to the use of your recorded image for any and all purposes of the New York Public Library.
PRESS | Please send all press inquiries to Alex Teplitzky at [email protected]. Please note that all recording, including professional video recordings, are prohibited without expressed consent from the Library.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Harvey Fierstein Theatre Lab, 111 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, United States
USD 0.00
