Something to watch tonight: Tuesday 29 April

Jazz (Burns, 2001)

DocPlay in Australia and New Zealand is an essen­tial stream­ing ser­vice and there’s noth­ing quite like it any­where else in the world.

Any time you feel at a loss for some­thing to watch, head there and you’ll find some­thing that will be worth your time.

Recently, they have added a bunch of titles from the archives of that great American doc­u­ment­ari­an Ken Burns and you could spend a few years, I reck­on, just work­ing your way through those. I count 18 fea­ture films and series avail­able. Titles I can recom­mend include the two-part bio­graphy of archi­tect Frank Lloyd-Wright (1998), the defin­it­ive tele­vi­sion his­tory of the American Civil War (1990) and the bril­liant exten­ded explor­a­tion of the phe­nomen­on that is Country Music (2019).

My par­ents have just been watch­ing the 12-episode series on The National Parks (2009) and I can’t ima­gine there’s any­thing more sooth­ing in these troubled times.

Jazz is only 10 epis­odes but is sim­il­arly com­pre­hens­ive and it shows off Burns’ (and his col­lab­or­at­ors’) great strength which is mak­ing a com­pre­hens­ible nar­rat­ive out of a vast amount of mater­i­al. Watching a Burns film, you get a clear sense of one event – and some­times the absence of an event – lead­ing to another. 

It starts with the remark­able open­ing trum­pet solo from “Black and Blue” by Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra from 1929 and the story of Armstrong bestrides the whole series like the colos­sus he was. 

If you’ve ever been jazz-curious, the series is a great way in, espe­cially when we get to the more dif­fi­cult eras of bebop, post-bop and hard-bop, etc. – chal­len­ging music for chal­len­ging times – but if you know where it’s all com­ing from, music­ally and socially, it becomes more comprehensible.

10 epis­odes gives the music time to shine but if you want more, the films spawned an epic box set with about a hun­dred tracks and also a series of CDs fea­tur­ing the best of the biggest names that were fea­tured includ­ing Bechet, Brubeck, Billie Holiday and more.

Where to watch Jazz

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Aotearoa and Australia: Streaming on DocPlay

Canada: Not cur­rently avail­able online

Ireland: Not cur­rently avail­able online

USA: Digital rent­al from Apple

UK: Digital rent­al from Apple