Jazz On A Summer's Day

Running time: 105 mins

Synopsis

Jazz On A Summer's Day is the first full-colour Jazz concert film made and is acclaimed as being one of the most exciting concerts ever recorded. The setting was the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island and it's director was commercial and fashion photographer Bert Stern. At that stage, Stern's reputation and growing fame was for his black and white photographs of Marilyn Monroe. The Columbia Records jazz producer, George Avakian, was the musical director of the film.

Stern brought the look and style of his renowned photographs to this, his first motion picture, documenting some of the most stunning images of live jazz ever brought to the silver screen. With the look of an impressionist painting, Stern lets the artists and the people who attended Newport 1958 do the talking.

Featured performances are from Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington, Louis Armstrong, Anita O'Day, The Jimmy Guiffre Trio and finishes with an astonishing performance by Mahalia Jackson.

In 1999, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

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