Jazz Icons: Series 4 (review)

Abstract

Jazz Icons: Series 4. DVD. [San Diego, CA]: Reelin' in the Years Productions, 2010. Naxos 2.108003. $119.99. Jazz is a music of the moment, a spontaneous conversation in which the rich vocabularies and rhetorical practices of individual musicians come together to create a unique and seemingly organic artistic experience. As such, jazz aficionados, musicians, and scholars alike frequently build libraries filled not only with the official studio releases of their favorite artists but also tapes, compact discs, and videotapes-often bearing the traces of innumerable generations of transfers-that document club dates, rare broadcasts, and unreleased cuts that allow listeners to eavesdrop on and glean new insights from the creative processes of jazz musicians. In their latest edition of the Jazz Icons series, producers David Peck, Phillip Galloway, and Tom Gulotta present brilliantly remastered films of seven jazz legends on 8 DVDs whose work revolutionized the medium. But, more important, Jazz Icons: Series 4 offers a fleeting glimpse into the rich archives of European television studios, wherein lie hundreds of hours of film that will fundamentally reshape our understanding of jazz as an expressive medium, the still under-researched history of jazz in Europe, and mid-twentiethcentury television production practices. Combining rare footage, meticulous liner notes written by renowned scholars and critics, and diligent remastering, the films in Jazz Icons: Series 4 constitute essential viewing for scholars and practitioners alike. The thirteen concert performances offered in this series capture several influential jazz artists at key moments in their careers, documenting culminating events, new beginnings, and ad hoc performances that, until now, have been known in lore only. Woody Herman: Live in '64, for example, showcases the so-called Swinging Herd in its prime, less than two years after its formation. Featuring trumpeter Bill Chase, trombonist Phil Wilson, and saxophonist Sal Nistico, the band rips through pianist Nat Pierce's arrangements of Charles Mingus's Better Git Hit in Your Soul and Oscar Peterson's Hallelujah Time, blending precise ensemble playing and improvisatory inventiveness that drew freely from the Herman orchestra's rich swing heritage while heralding the new wave of big bands to be heard in later iterations of the Herman, Buddy Rich, and Stan Kenton groups. The three Coleman Hawkins performances here-from the June 1962 Adolphe Sax Festival, an October 1964 BBC broadcast, and a December 1966 concert at London's Poplar Town Hall- focus on an artist in decline. …