Full Description
Watching Jazz: Encounters with Jazz Performance on Screen is the first systematic study of jazz on screen media. Where earlier studies have focused almost entirely on the role and portrayal of jazz in Hollywood film, the present book engages with a plethora of technologies and media from early film and soundies through television to recent developments in digital technologies and online media. Likewise, the authors discuss jazz in the widest sense, ranging from Duke Ellington and Jimmy Dorsey through the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Oscar Peterson, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus to Pat Metheny.
Much of this rich and fascinating material has never been studied in depth before, and what emerges most clearly are the manifold connections between the music and the media on which it was and is being recorded. Its long association with film and television has left its trace in jazz, just as online and social media are subtly shaping it now. Vice versa, visual media have always benefited from focusing on music and this significantly affected their development. The book follows these interrelations, showing how jazz was presented and represented on screen and what this tells us about the music, the people who made it and their audiences. The result is a new approach to jazz and the media, which will be required reading for students of both fields.
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Introduction
Jenny Doctor, Peter Elsdon, Björn Heile
Shaping Screen Media
1. Framing Jazz: Thoughts on Representation and Embodiment Peter Elsdon
2. "All Aboard!:" Soundies and Vitaphone Shorts Emile Wennekes
3. Assimilating and Domesticating Jazz in 1950s American Variety Television: Nat King Cole's Transformation from Guest Star to National Host Kristin McGee
4. "Jazz Is Where You Find It:" Encountering Jazz on BBC Television, 1946-66, Jenny Doctor
Gesture and Mediatization
5. "All Sights Were Perceived as Sounds" Pat Metheny and the Instrumental Image, Jonathan De Souza
6. Jazz Performance on Screen: Mediatization of Gesture, Bodily Empathy, and the Viewing Experience, Paul McIntyre
7. "Playing the Clown:" Charles Mingus, Jimmy Knepper, and Jerry Maguire, Krin Gabbard
Ontologies of Media
8. Seeking Resolution: John Coltrane, Myth, and the Audio-Visual, Tony Whyton
9. Screening the Event: Watching Miles Davis's "My Funny Valentine", Nicholas Gebhardt
10. Play it again, Duke: Jazz Performance, Improvisation, and the Construction of Spontaneity, Björn Heile
Selected Resources
Author Biographies
Index
