Movies
April 2008 DVDs By George Kanzler
Norman Granz Presents Improvisation
When the footage of Charlie Parker on the “Gjon Mili Studio Sequence” from 1950 first appeared as a video in 1996 it was like discovering the Holy Grail of jazz. Now that infamous footage is finally being reissued in a more complete format, with a lot of...
April 2008 DVDs By Jeff Tamarkin
Non Stop Travels with Michel Petrucciani/Trio Live in Stuttgart
It would have been easy and obvious for a documentarian to make a film focusing on how Michel Petrucciani became an extraordinary jazz pianist despite a degenerative bone disease that kept him tiny his entire life. Thankfully, director Roger Willemsen chose...
January/February 2008 DVDs By Jeff Tamarkin
Mahmou D Ahmed & Eit Her/Orchestra
It was perhaps inevitable that Either/Orchestra would someday collaborate with the great veteran Ethiopian vocalist Mahmoud Ahmed. The 10- piece E/O, though rooted in jazz, has never been tied to one stream of thought—Afro-Cuban percussion, rock drive, bop...
January/February 2008 DVDs By Jeff Tamarkin
Live at Montreux, 1997
Still The Genius a half-century in
January/February 2008 DVDs By Bill Milkowski
Live at Montreux, 1984/1974
From the vaults of Claude Nobs, the irrepressible harmonica- playing impresario of the Montreux Jazz Festival, comes this two-DVD set documenting two different phases of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra. The expanded 1974 edition is closer in spirit...
November 2007 DVDs By Bill Meredith
A Retrospective
With director Daniel E. Meza’s liner notes touting Larry Coryell as “one of the greatest guitarists of all time, if not the greatest,” and an introductory quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes about the difficulty of recognizing genius, it’s easy to approach A...
November 2007 DVDs By Bill Milkowski
Gil Evans And His Orchestra
This live recording of a concert in Switzerland is a rare document of the late ’70s edition of the Gil Evans Orchestra featuring Randy and Michael Brecker, vibist Mike Mainieri, drummer Billy Cobham, bassist Tim Landers and guitarist Dean Brown. They join...
November 2007 DVDs By Mike Joyce
The Whisper Not Tour
It could be argued that this DVD is worth having for sentimental reasons alone, since it captures trumpeter Art Farmer’s last concert engagement with saxophonist Benny Golson and trombonist Curtis Fuller, fellow founders of the Jazztet. If that’s not enough...
November 2007 DVDs By Bill Meredith
Super Guitar Trio Live at Montreux 1989
Fairly or not, any disc with the title “Super Guitar Trio” seems like a sequel to the popular 1980 acoustic live album Friday Night in San Francisco, by Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco DeLucia. Larry Coryell was part of that trio in the late 1970s...
November 2007 DVDs By Mike Joyce
Live at the Smithsonian Jazz Café
Washington, D.C. has long been a guitar town, a hub for players as diverse as Roy Clark, Roy Buchanan, Danny Gatton and Charlie Byrd. So it’s only fitting that the Smithsonian Jazz Café, a not-so-cozy space located in the National Museum of Natural History...
