On Saturday Jan. 24, the Museum of Modern Art will present “Free Jazz on Film,” a program that explores the work of avant-garde jazz pioneers Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and Archie Shepp through screen and sound. The event, hosted in conjunction with the new Jazz Generations Initiative (JGI), funded by the Mellon Foundation and a part of MoMA’s “To Save and Project” series, will feature appearances by Pulitzer Prize-winning musician Henry Threadgill, historian Manthia Diawara, and Robert O’Meally, the founder of Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies and co-director of JGI. The initiative, located in New York City and New Orleans, seeks to “unite artists and listeners with intergenerational performance opportunities and interdisciplinary jazz studies scholarship,” according to their website, and will host multiple performances in NYC this season.
“To Save and Project” is “an international festival dedicated to celebrating newly preserved film treasures from archives, studios, and independent filmmakers,” according to MoMA’s website. The series will offer jazz aficionados a first look at three recently restored films that will give audiences a glimpse into the creative processes of three remarkably unique and forward-thinking musical voices connected to NYC. The first film, “The Magic Sun,” highlights the work of pianist and bandleader Sun-Ra, an Afrofuturist trailblazer who lived in New York from 1961 to 1968. The new restoration of the film that originally premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1968 features a new 16mm print and noise reduction. This will precede “We Came Back,” a 1969 Algerian film that highlights the work of saxophonist Archie Shepp who made landmark experimental records with John Coltrane and “moved American jazz toward a greater Pan-African consciousness,” as described on the MoMA website. He began his storied career working alongside pianist and composer Cecil Taylor, who is the subject of the last film, “Les grandes répétitions: Cecil Taylor à Paris,” a 1968 French title that translates to, “Great Rehearsals: Cecil Taylor in Paris.” Taylor, a Queens native, pioneered avant-garde music with new approaches at sound creation on influential albums like “Unit Structures.”
Tickets for the screening and discussion are available at moma.org and students can currently save $4 on the price of admission with their school ID. You can also stay up to date with the Jazz Generations Initiative, who will host performances on Jan. 22 and Feb. 21, at jazzgenerations.org
Free Jazz on Film at MoMA explores work of avant-garde pioneers
