About this Event
In celebration of Black History Month, join us for this intimate film screening of Hugo Berkeley and Mick Csàky's 'The Jazz Ambassadors'. With an original score by accomplished musician and composer McEvoy (also a tutor at LCCM!), the screening will be followed by an informative presenation on the scoring process and an open Q&A for any of your questions.
The screening and event is free and open to all. We look forward to welcoming you!
More info on the film, music and score below.
The Film
In 1955, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie announced a cool new Cold War weapon; America’s iconic jazz musicians and their racially integrated bands would cross the globe to counter negative press about racism in American. Over the next decade, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Dave Bru- beck, would tour the world in service of US Cold War interests. But the unfolding Civil Rights movement forced them into a moral bind; how could they promote a tolerant image of America abroad when racial equality remained an unrealized dream at home? This is the story how the State Department unwittingly gave Civil Rights a voice on the world stage when it needed one most.
The Jazz Ambassadors is written and directed by Peabody-award winning director Hugo Berkeley and produced by renowned filmmaker Mick Csàky. The film received major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It will screen on public television stations in the USA and Europe starting in April 2018. The Jazz Ambassadors is an Antelope/Normal Life Pictures production for THIRTEEN/WNET (New York) in association with ARTE and the BBC.
The Music
The Jazz Ambassadors is full of remarkable performances. We have dug up extremely rare film archive of Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five performing in Accra, Africa, of Duke Ellington and his Orchestra on stage in Bombay, India, and of Benny Goodman and his band in St. Petersburg, Russia. Listening to a rare solo performance of Dave Brubeck playing “Thank You (Dziekuje)”, we learn about why Brubeck wrote the song, and of its heart-stopping reception in Wasraw, Poland in 1958. Chock-a-block with musical nuggets like these, the film will keep jazz aficionados and non-special- ist audiences delighted from the first frame to the last.
The Score
Musician and composer Michael J. McEvoy assembled a stellar line-up to record the 12-track soundtrack he wrote for the film. At times a moving homage to the struggles endured by these great jazz icons, and at others a playful globetrotting jamboree, McEvoy’s score stands as a valuable meditation on cultural exchange in its own right. Recorded and mixed by Nick Taylor at Air-Edel Studios, the score features deft improvisations from some of London’s best jazzmen; among others, Mark Mondesir on drums, Karl Rasheed Abel on bass, Paul Booth, Patrick Clahar and Graeme Blevins on sax, Dennis Rollins and Fayyaz Virji on trombones, McEvoy on piano, Kevin Robinson, Tom Walsh, and Freddie Gavita on trumpet.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Music Box, 241 Union Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00