A portrait of the legendary tenor and soprano saxophonist, Wayne Shorter, made in 2013 as he turned 80. This French documentary has a very brief introduction in French, but all the interviews — the bulk of the film — are in English.
This live performance comes from “Joe Zawinul: A Musical Portrait” a one-hour documentary about the legendary keyboardist, his life and contribution to jazz.
This live performance comes from “Joe Zawinul: A Musical Portrait” a one-hour documentary about the legendary keyboardist, his life and contribution to jazz.
Sabine Kabongo is the vocalist.
This one-hour documentary about the legendary keyboardist, his life and contribution to jazz, features live performances by his band, Zawinul Syndicate, at a concert in Vienna in 2004. Joe Zawinul died, aged 75, in 2007.
He recounts a time, not long after his arrival in America where he had become pianist in the Cannonball Adderley Quintet when, after a concert, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie came up to him asking, “Why do you play like that, man?”
They challenged Zawinul because of his lack of originality and said he was capable of much more. Thereafter, he refused to play any phrase he had ever played before, plunged into a brief crisis, took some LSD and suddenly discovered his musical voice and became a prolific composer. The rest, as they say, is history…
This clip comes from a French television documentary. For the keen-eyed as you watch this you might be wondering: where did the orchestra go? It happens at 3 minutes 6 seconds. (It doesn’t take keen ears to hear the pitch and tempo transition.)
The film editor, Tal Zana, explains:
My favorite shot is the one that nobody notices when watching the film (which is unfortunately an indicator of a successful effect): the disappearing orchestra behind the bass player, John Patitucci. The idea here was to cut between two performances of the same composition (Over Shadow Hill Way), starting with a full-orchestra rendition and transitioning smoothly to the quartet-only performance. This was achieved by masking the foreground by hand, frame by frame (a couple of days’ work), and then carefully cutting to the close-up shot of Patitucci.