Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959)

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Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959) – B. Stern

This is more than just filmed jazz.  Instead, Bert Stern has used his photographer’s eye and sensibility to create moments of real transcendence and even joy from footage of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.  Of course, the music itself heightens the ecstatic moments caught on camera, with sounds ranging from the traditional (Louis Armstrong) to something slightly more modern (Chico Hamilton Quintet featuring Eric Dolphy, Thelonius Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Jimmy Giuffre) with Chuck Berry and Mahalia Jackson thrown in for good measure.  There is a vibrancy here in the photography (reflections in the water, birds overhead, transfixed or finger-snapping audience members) and in the way the music and the photography come together that makes you want to really look at things in this world and to take out all those old jazz records and put them on.  A little bit of social commentary drifts in if you notice the racial dynamics of the event – but things seem so harmonious that suddenly 1958 feels like an idyllic period in history captured perfectly and forever by Stern.  Remarkable.