Given guitarist John Abercrombie’s recent passing, you may be inclined to view Open Land, a film by directors Arno Oehri and Oliver Primus, as something it was never intended to be: an elegiac postscript. Instead, the film comes across as a lyrical portrait, quiet, spacious, reflective, and funny. From the outset, Oehri and Primus distill…Read More
Is it possible to be a fan of jazz and not be a fan of Blue Note Records? At once a kind of steward station, hooking listeners up with recordings that change their lives, and a beacon pointing out where to locate sounds that recalibrate jazz’s possibilities, the label has always been a conductor of…Read More
Early in the new documentary Chasing Trane, Benny Golson recalls his friendship with John Coltrane, complaining that the iconic saxophonist made him do all the talking. “He was quiet,” Golson says. “He never talked—until he put that saxophone in his mouth.” Director John Scheinfeld, never a diehard jazz fan before making Chasing Trane, discovered Coltrane’s…Read More
German bassist Eberhard Weber, closely identified with the ECM sound, has long been appreciated for his unique voice as an instrumentalist, playing a custom-designed five-string electric-acoustic upright, and as a composer, employing various strains of chamber jazz, new music, contemporary classical and avant-minded material. Weber’s legacy, including a measurable impact on European jazz, was celebrated…Read More
Extras include insight-filled featurettes…Read More
On Chet Baker, the trappings of biopics, and more…Read More
A bizarre action-movie narrative derails Don Cheadle’s long-anticipated jazz flick…Read More
Spirit and story top biography in Robert Budreau’s inventive “Born to Be Blue”…Read More
The Unity Sessions strives to capture the connections, both musical and extramusical, shared by the members of guitarist Pat Metheny’s most recent working group, the Unity Band: saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Ben Williams, drummer Antonio Sanchez and keyboardist/vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Giulio Carmassi. Metheny wanted to document the musical and human rapport developing within the unit, but he…Read More
It’s hard to overestimate how eagerly fusion fans anticipated JACO, the first full-length documentary on Jaco Pastorius, the game-changing electric bass virtuoso and gifted composer. Directed by Paul Marchand and Stephen Kijak, the film-nearly six years in the making-became a reality thanks to its producer and cowriter, Metallica bassist and Pastorius superfan Robert Trujillo. It’s…Read More
