Jazz on a Summers Day (1960)

Part concert documentary, part pop-cultural time capsule, Bert Sterns Jazz on a Summers Day chronicles the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival with an approach as deceptively relaxed, even impulsive, as the music itself. Still photographer Stern sidesteps more formal documentary conventions such as narrative voiceovers to wander purposefully from festival stage to boarding-house jam sessions, taking in the parallel color and motion of the Americas Cup preparations when he isnt capturing rich color footage of the performances and the celebratory mood of the concertgoers. In the process, he documents American jazz at a notably golden moment in its development--diverse, adventurous, and still broadly popular, this was jazz not yet under the shadow of rock and youth culture, played by an integrated artistic community a few short years away from social and political turmoil that would boil divisively to the surface during the 60s. To say Stern was rolling film in a jazz Camelot is overstatement, but only slightly so.
Sterns circular approach and wonderful eye achieve a breezy languor at the expense of more comprehensive coverage of the festivals bumper crop of strong jazz, blues, and gospel musicians. Perhaps inevitably, the camera lingers on Louis Armstrong, Anita O Day, Mahalia Jackson, Dinah Washington, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, and George Shearing. Avid fans of later styles may be frustrated by the fleeting glimpses of other musicians such as Eric Dolphy and Art Farmer, or the honor roll of classic jazz stylists whose Newport sets werent included in the film, but such omissions seem forgivable, if not necessary, to Sterns serendipitous design. --Sam Sutherland 


Artists:
Jimmy Giuffre
Thelonious Monk
Henry Grimes
Sonny Stitt
Sal Salvador
Anita O Day 
George Shearing
Dinah Washington
Gerry Mulligan
Big Maybelle
Chuck Berry
Chico Hamilton
Louis Armstrong
Jack Teagarden
Mahalia Jack

Size: 1198.93 Mb ( 1 257 166 848 bytes )
Play length: 01:21:32.809 (117310 frames)
Subtitles: Not Present
Video: 640x472 (1.36:1), 23.976 fps, XviD MPEG-4 ~1662 kbps avg, 0.23 bit/pixel
Audio: 48 kHz, AC3 Dolby Digital, 3/2 (L,C,R,l,r) + LFE ch, ~384.00 kbps avg
No need subtitles