IN CINEMA
IMAGINE THE SOUND
Made In Harlem: Cinema Blues
Screening: Friday, March 14, at 7PM
Tickets: $15 General admission / $7 Reduced Price
Ron Mann, 1981, 91 minutes
Four titans of "the new thing" – Paul Bley, Bill Dixon, Archie Shepp and an irrepressible Cecil Taylor – give candid testimony on the free jazz explosion of the 1960's, and in a series of sweeping performance pieces, demonstrate their ceaseless search for new sounds.
This screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Santi Debriano, Marc Edwards and Stephen Haynes, former bandmates of Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor and Bill Dixon!
About the panelists:
SANTI DEBRIANO is a bassist and educator. He leads the large ensemble Arkestra Bembe, and has performed with such diverse jazz masters as Kenny Clarke, Mal Waldron, Archie Shepp, Kirk Lightsey, Chico Freeman, Arthur Blythe, David Murray, Attila Zoller, Lee Konitz, Oliver Lake, Baikida Carrol, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, Hank Jones, Elvin Jones, Randy Weston and Roy Hanes.
MARC EDWARDS is a percussionist who specializes in free jazz, experimental music and underground noise rock. He is formerly a member of the Cecil Taylor Unit and Apogee with David S. Ware and Cooper Moore, and has performed with Charles Gayle, Matthew Shipp, David Carter, William Hooker and Darius Jones.
STEPHEN HAYNES is an organizer and improviser who plays the cornet, trumpet and flugelhorn. Over the past 45 years, he has worked with a range of vanguard composers, including Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, George Russell, Butch Morris, Rhys Chatham, Gunter Hampel, LaMonte Young, Earle Brown and Tyshawn Sorey.
About Made In Harlem: Cinema Blues:
Cinema Blues is a monthly series at the Maysles Documentary Center dedicated to the convergence of jazz and film. Rather than focus on movies soundtracked by jazz, it foregrounds documentaries that capture the many facets of the music and culture: the living history of jazz, its performance, the spiritual & political philosophies of its creators, and the racism & economic struggles they have consistently faced. In this sense, Cinema Blues = a blues cinema, a filmic accounting (in the tradition of writers like Amiri Baraka, A. B. Spellman, Val Wilmer) of the real-life stakes (and breaks) that inform the great Black American classical music. The series also features poetic and experimental films that evoke the spontaneous creativity of the music (cinema as jazz), lectures, panel discussions & musical performances.
Cinema Blues takes its title from a tune by Ahmed Abdul-Malik, and is curated by Andrew Castillo. The series is made possible by the generous support of the West Harlem Development Corporation (WHDC).
