Blue Note Jazz Festival: Round Midnight

Monday, June 24, 2013

Archival 35mm print

In honor of what would have been legendary jazz musician Dexter Gordon’s 90th birthday, we’re pleased to present a special screening of ROUND MIDNIGHT, featuring Gordon’s Oscar-nominated performance. Following the screening, the Blue Note Jazz Festival will host an in-depth panel discussion, moderated by American music/jazz historian, journalist and producer Ashley Kahn. The panel will also include Dexter Gordon’s wife, Maxine Gordon; former President/CEO of Blue Note Records, Bruce Ludvall; iconic jazz saxophonist Jimmy Heath; saxophonist and composer Greg Osby; and jazz record producer, writer and founder of Mosaic Records, Michael Cuscuna.

“Tavernier’s offbeat love letter to bebop gets the best jazz film award since Sven Klang’s Combo. Night after night in the pouring rain, a young Frenchman (Francois Cluzet) squats outside a Parisian jazz club, listening to the sublime saxophone of one ‘Dale Turner’. Since Turner, a shambling bear of a man, is troubled by the jazzman’s classic demons of drink and drugs, it is not long before the young man has befriended him, rescued him from cheap flophouses, and installed him in his own flat, where kindness and devotion achieve some kind of advance over the depredations of the jazz life. The film reeks of the authentic stuff of jazz, smoky with atmosphere and all as blue as a Gauloise packet. Dale Turner, as played by Dexter Gordon, seems to be an amalgam of Bud Powell and Lester Young, but the private, rueful dignity that he brings to bear is all his own.” – Time Out (London)

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