Jul 17, 2025 12:44 PM
DownBeat’s 73rd Annual Critics Poll: One for the Record Books
You see before you what we believe is the largest and most comprehensive Critics Poll in the history of jazz. DownBeat…
New York’s Museum of Modern Art will explore the history of jazz scores in films from the 1950s to the present. Starting April 15 and ending Sept. 15, the film retrospective will feature live concerts and a gallery exhibition.
The Academy Award-nominated film score by Alex North for Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) is credited with opening up jazz scoring to a new generation of composers, including Elmer Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Quincy Jones, Lalo Schifrin and Henry Mancini.
Collaborations between New Wave filmmakers and Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and more recent efforts like those between Spike Lee and Terence Blanchard, Clint Eastwood and Lennie Niehaus, and David Cronenberg with composers Ornette Coleman and Howard Shore, are featured in the film retrospective.
The gallery exhibition will present original film posters, album covers, moving-image clips and movie trailers, animation art and other printed materials relating to jazz and cinema.
The concert series will feature contemporary musicians performing some of the original jazz soundtracks featured in the film program.
More info: moma.org
James Brandon Lewis earned honors for Artist of the Year and Tenor Saxophonist of the Year. Three of his recordings placed in the Albums of the Year category.
Jul 17, 2025 12:44 PM
You see before you what we believe is the largest and most comprehensive Critics Poll in the history of jazz. DownBeat…
Galper was often regarded as an underrated master of his craft.
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Chuck Mangione on the cover of the May 8, 1975, edition of DownBeat.
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“Hamiet was one of the most underrated musicians ever,” says Whitaker of baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett.
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At 56, Rodney Whitaker, professor of jazz bass and director of jazz studies at Michigan State University, is equally…
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The DownBeat Critics Poll provides a wonderful snapshot of the jazz scene today, with much to explore and many great…
