COMPOSERS: Art Blakey,etc,Miles Davis,Modern Jazz Quartet
LABELS: Jazz on Film Records
ALBUM TITLE: Jazz On Film: French New Wave 1957-62
WORKS: Jazz on Film
PERFORMER: Miles Davis (trumpet), Modern Jazz Quartet, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Martial Solal (piano) etc
CATALOGUE NO: JOF001
This third immaculately transferred and produced collection of jazz film music presented by jazz writer Selwyn Harris could almost be rubber stamped with ‘see reviews of previous collections’; the project’s standards remain outrageously high at a time when even jazz’s supposedly supportive institutions are increasingly indifferent to critical insight.
Of course the music’s the thing, and here we have five CDs carrying the scores from seven films including Breathless and Les liaisons dangereuses from the likes of drummer Art Blakey, pianist Martial Solal and trumpeter Miles Davis, whose music for Lift to the Scaffold is already a discographical fixture and should act as a come-on for the whole set.
Nonetheless, it’s the expert curatorship and 60 pages of scholarly yet approachable notes, integrating both music and films into the culture of the period rather than just saying how great everything was, that glues the whole together so well. Invaluable (again).
Roger Thomas