I’m resurrecting this monthly column once more, concentrating on movies streaming online. To begin, I’ve spotlighted three jazz shorts from the ‘60s.
Enjoy.
—Tanner
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Opus Jazz (Janusz Majewski, 1963)
Majewski (still with us at 90) crafts a tight, twelve-minute document of a recording session for the Andrzej Kurylewicz Quintet. Spread out in a cozy room, the ease and comfort among the musicians is instantly apparent, goofing as they rehearse and run through several false starts. All players contribute to the piece, tossing around phrases and ideas and themes, at one point even tinkering with the melody for Nat Adderley’s “Work Song” as an inspiration. By the end, they’re playing for real—and swinging hard. Majewski captures the effort with careful camera placements, moving ever so slightly yet so noticeably on soloists like tenor sax Jan “Ptaszyn” Wróblewski. Amid the music-making, Majewski renders the recording process itself transparent, finding space for shots of the engineers adjusting sound levels and pushing buttons, magnetic tape spooling, and the “Silence” sign lit up.
Vimeo (Unfortunately no English subtitles)
Toronto Jazz (Don Owen, 1963)
Hipster vocalist Don Francks hangs out with and interviews members of the Lenny Breau Trio, the Don Thompson Quintet, and the Alf Jones Quartet. Breau, an underrated guitarist championed by Chet Atkins, noodles with a Bach composition. Mike Snow the pianist, before moving to New York and becoming Michael Snow the avant-garde filmmaker, sits in his studio and waxes on about the differences between painting and jazz. Drummer Archie Alleyne says he got into jazz because he didn’t want to become a working stiff.
Don Owen intercuts these encounters with the groups performing before enraptured audiences at smoke-choked nightclubs. What he provides is a glimpse of the city’s jazz scene culled from off-the-cuff footage. Owen would push his freeform technique further with his exclusively improvisational debut feature the following year, Nobody Waved Good-bye.
David, Moffett, and Ornette: The Ornette Coleman Trio (Dick Fontaine, 1966)
Shot over three days, Fontaine offers a behind-the-scenes look at the trio during a recording session in Paris. They’re performing part of the soundtrack for Thomas White and Allan Zion’s experimental curio Who’s Crazy (1966). Fontaine’s fly-on-the-wall footage captures Coleman in an unusual setting, playing instruments not normally associated with him: trumpet and violin, which he had just taught himself. As the film projected on the screen ends, the musicians rest. When White tells them they must score the movie again, this time hitting their marks exactly to sync with the images, Moffett’s frustration is palpable. “You don’t understand, man. Who’s crazy?” he says pointedly. With a gentle hand and a soothing word, Coleman calms his rising irritability. Such are the demands of the leader.
Tanner Tafelski 