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312 Pages | over 50 illustrations
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Watching Jazz
Encounters with Jazz Performance on Screen
Edited by Björn Heile, Peter Elsdon, and Jenny Doctor
First systematic study of jazz on screen media
Offers new theoretical approaches to the topic
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.
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
Björn Heile is Reader in Music since 1900 and Head of Music at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of The Music of Mauricio Kagel (2006) and editor of The Modernist Legacy: Essays on New Music (2009).
Peter Elsdon is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Hull. He is the author of Keith Jarrett's The Köln Concert (2013), and he has also published work on jazz recordings, and gesture in music.
Jenny Doctor is Associate Professor in the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
Jonathan De Souza (University of Western Ontario)
Jenny Doctor (Syracuse University)
Peter Elsdon (University of Hull)
Krin Gabbard (Columbia University)
Nicholas Gebhardt (Birmingham City University)
Björn Heile (University of Glasgow)
Kristin McGee (University of Groningen)
Paul McIntyre (Dundalk Institute of Technology)
Emile Wennekes (Utrecht University)
Tony Whyton (Birmingham City University)
"In this collection of essays authors delve into the rich audiovisual documentation of jazz, much of which has been neglected by scholars, with some fascinating results. Watching Jazz makes an important contribution to jazz studies, exemplifying methodologies for studying audiovisual sources and providing a key reference point for future scholarship."--Catherine Tackley, The Open University
"Jazz is performance and performances are visual. This elegant and expertly constructed book interrogates, in a game changing way, the notion that all jazz is to some extent visual. It opens fertile new avenues of debate, challenges some sacred cows and will undoubtedly become an essential text for anybody interested in the relationship between jazz and how it is presented on screen."--Raymond MacDonald, Edinburgh University
"This stimulating collection encourages us to reexamine some of the more commonly-held and persistent assumptions with regard to jazz on screen, whether that screen is large or small, analog or digital, public or private. Essential reading for anyone interested in watching jazz."--Alan Stanbridge, University of Toronto
"Watching Jazz is an enlightening and enjoyable book. Well written and well edited, these chapters speak to each other, and contrasting viewpoints come across as alternative understandings rather than conflicting standpoints. I recommend this book to any jazz, media, or social history scholars seeking to explore new ways in which to think about the production and reception of jazz, or the ways that the music and audiovisual presentation developed in tandem. Watching Jazz is a timely collection, as it builds upon recent scholarship (by Elsdon, Brian Harker, Katz, Jed Rasula, Gabriel Solis, Catherine Tackley, Keith Waters, and others) about the role of audio recording in jazz, and expands this scholarship by showing how the visual element directs viewers towards aspects of the music, which in turn allows them to see and hear elements of jazz more clearly." --Notes
The new jazz films (and their old models)
Recent months have seen the release of two movies about great jazz trumpeters from the 1950s and 60s: Miles Ahead (Don Cheadle, 2015) focusing on Miles Davis, and Born to Be Blue (Robert Budreau, 2015) focusing on Chet Baker (although Miles plays an important role in the latter too: his second cinematic revival in one year). The similarities don't end there: both films are semi-fictional, homing in on a moment of crisis in their respective protagonists' real lives and spinning a mostly fictional story around it.
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