Mar 30, 2026 10:30 PM
Flea Finds His Jazz Thing
In the relatively small pantheon of certifiable rock stars venturing into the intersection of pop music and jazz, the…
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
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