Part of Music City Mondays
Filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival in Rhode Island and directed by world-renowned photographer, Bert Stern. JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY features intimate performances by an all-star line-up of musical legends including Louis Armstrong, Thelonius Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Anita O’Day, Chuck Berry and Dinah Washington — and closes with a beautiful rendition of “The Lord’s Prayer” by Mahalia Jackson at midnight to usher in Sunday morning. The 1959 classic is considered one of the most extraordinary and possibly the first concert film ever made. The film was named to the National Film Registry in 1999, and its restoration was funded by the National Film Preservation Board of the Library of Congress in time to celebrate the film’s 60th anniversary.
“Outstanding.. It's Americana, and a document of its time as well via observation of audiences and the life surrounding the Newport event.” —Variety
“Careful planning, time and budget management, circumstance, and a large dollop of good fortune have all combined to make JAZZ ON A SUMMER’S DAY unique and unrepeatable… A virtual blueprint for all later concert films in all musical genres to follow.” —Randy Freedman, Chicago Jazz Magazine
“A fascinating sociological document: a portrait of American leisure and privilege in the Eisenhower era, brimming with sunny hopes and sublimated tensions… A tonic for the standard grim syntax of jazz onscreen—or a vision of some hopeful, integrated future—we know it was also an exceptional outlier, a document in many ways unrepeatable and unique.” —Nate Chinen, WBGO
