Jazz on a Summer's Day/A Summer's Day With Bert Stern

Jazz on a Summer's Day/A Summer's Day With Bert Stern
by Bert Stern, Aram Avakian

Our Price: $69.98
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $39.88 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details

Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada

DVD details

Actor: Chico Hamilton, Chuck Berry, Gerry Mulligan, Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson
Director: Aram Avakian, Bert Stern
Cinematographer: Bert Stern
Cinematographer: Courtney Hesfela
Producer: George Wein
Producer: Harvey Kahn
Writer: Albert D'Annibale
Writer: Arnold Perl
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 85 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-03-14
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: New Yorker Video

DVD Reviews of Jazz on a Summer's Day/A Summer's Day With Bert Stern

DVD Review: Best jazz movie ever!
Summary: 5 Stars

Excellent transfer of a great concert film. Seller was accurate in all aspects. I would certainly do business, with him again.

DVD Review: Best Jazz Film Ever Made
Summary: 5 Stars

See title of review.Also considered a landmark in documentary fil making in and of itself.
Chazz

DVD Review: A 50's Idyll
Summary: 5 Stars

Ahh, you Boomers can take your Woodstock and your Monterrey and most definitely your Altamont (*shudder*) - THIS is the music festival I'D loved to have been at: The Newport Jazz Festival of 1958. It's something of a sour old Gen-Xer's solace to think that it's unlikely the real event could have borne much resemblance to this utterly gorgeous film made by the great photographer Bert Stern, all cherry-red and sea-blue and glowing with an unreal light. Stern (most famous for the "last session" with Marilyn Monroe) makes everyone an icon, the audience as well as the performers. These seem the very hip/squarest cats in the world at the right place at exactly the right time -- black guys in crisp suits and white guys in t-shirts and pompadours, girls in hats and scarves and boy's slacks, women in crinolines and multi-strand pearls and blue-tinted sunglasses, men in horn-rims and skinny ties -- all of them sitting together and bopping and smiling and smoking and occasionally getting up to jitterbug ecstatically in the angelic light of Bert Stern's awesome camera. You know it's a good show when Thelonious Monk is one of the opening acts, folks. Anita O'Day gets the party started, Chico Hamilton makes it mellow, Dinah Washington burns it up, Chuck Berry gets the kids rockin' and rollin', Louis Armstrong sends everyone into conniptions of rapture, and Mahalia Jackson absolutely steals the entire show at the end with The Lord's Prayer, a beautiful moment which truly seems to herald the breaking of a new kind of dawn. A must-see.

DVD Review: A Time Capsule
Summary: 5 Stars

Jazz on a Summer's Day captures a day in time that for me is magic. Each musician at the top of his or her game, set for all who lived through that era to enjoy again.
Those too young to have known this time will enjoy seeing some of the Jazz legends of the era.
The Newport Jazz Festival was a legendary meeting of the new and the old.
The open car scenes at the beginning and at the end capture the spirit of the times!

DVD Review: Some PERFECT jazz plus blues gospel and more
Summary: 5 Stars

First of all, let me tell you how thrilled I am by this DVD - it has amazing musical moment with, for instance, Thelonious Monk, Anita O'Day, Mahalia Jackson and Louis Armstrong shining very brightly (although, yes, the Monk number is marred by some mood shots and other interventions...), Satchmo and Teagarden crooning and scatting magnificently... Actually, I don't think I've seen a more beautiful footage of Armstrong's performance; he was still on the top in the 50s and Bert Stern portraits him beautifully, with some fortunatelly stylized stage lighting.

And it goes beyond music; check out the glamour of O'Day's attire, the moment very spirited Dinah Washington grabs the battons and joins Terry Gibbs on the vibes, the look on great Jo Jones' face while he supports Chuck Berry or, for that matter, the bizarre clarinet spot on that number - someone's review said it's Peanuts Hacko (who is too caucasian, as you can see on Armstrong's numbers on some other DVD's), others mention Rudy Rutheford - I don't know how he looked like (I do know he played in Count Basie orchestra back in 40s or something like that, so I guess he might be African American)...

I would agree with those who say that cool jazz numbers don't fare here as well as the traditional jazz, blues, gospel, mainstream and some modern ( Thelonious Monk!) numbers, even with the annoying break in the middle of the Sonny Stitt-Sal Salvador performance.

The breaks in the performance grow rarer as the film reaches the end, so there is place for true climax and musical as well as cinemathic catharsis in the end. But, from strictly cinematic point of view, I must add that there are some really fine shots; even the disinterested lady eating ice-cream looks interesting - it probably is a picture of the festival culture before the 50s, as is the attempt to connect it with the entertainment and leisure industry in general....

All in all, this is a unique jazz experience (and an interesting although not perfect film), recommended (or, should I say indispensable) to all serious jazz fans and interested beginners.

Description of Jazz on a Summer's Day/A Summer's Day With Bert Stern

Part concert documentary, part pop-cultural time capsule, Bert Stern's Jazz on a Summer's Day chronicles the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival with an approach as deceptively relaxed, even impulsive, as the music itself. Still photographer Stern sidesteps more formal documentary conventions such as narrative voiceovers to wander purposefully from festival stage to boarding-house jam sessions, taking in the parallel color and motion of the America's Cup preparations when he isn't capturing rich color footage of the performances and the celebratory mood of the concertgoers. In the process, he documents American jazz at a notably golden moment in its development--diverse, adventurous, and still broadly popular, this was jazz not yet under the shadow of rock and youth culture, played by an integrated artistic community a few short years away from social and political turmoil that would boil divisively to the surface during the '60s. To say Stern was rolling film in a jazz Camelot is overstatement, but only slightly so.

Stern's circular approach and wonderful eye achieve a breezy languor at the expense of more comprehensive coverage of the festival's bumper crop of strong jazz, blues, and gospel musicians. Perhaps inevitably, the camera lingers on Louis Armstrong, Anita O'Day, Mahalia Jackson, Dinah Washington, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, and George Shearing. Avid fans of later styles may be frustrated by the fleeting glimpses of other musicians such as Eric Dolphy and Art Farmer, or the honor roll of classic jazz stylists whose Newport sets weren't included in the film, but such omissions seem forgivable, if not necessary, to Stern's serendipitous design. --Sam Sutherland

African American Cinema DVDs

DVD Video

Bestsellers in African American Cinema DVDs

What's Love Got To Do With It?
Release date: 1999-08-24; DVD
Best price: $4.75
Price in other shops: ~~$14.99~~

Friday (New Line Platinum Series)
Warner Brothers; Release date: 1999-03-02; DVD
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops: ~~$12.98~~

Love Jones
Warner Brothers; Release date: 1999-07-27; DVD
Best price: $5.78
Price in other shops: ~~$12.98~~

Nightjohn
Release date: 2005-06-07; DVD
Best price: $2.43
Price in other shops: ~~$6.99~~

The Corner (HBO Miniseries)
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2003-07-22; DVD
Best price: $6.08
Price in other shops: ~~$39.98~~

Menace II Society
Release date: 1997-10-22; DVD
Best price: $6.05
Price in other shops: ~~$14.96~~

The Tuskegee Airmen
Release date: 2001-01-23; DVD
Best price: $3.19
Price in other shops: ~~$5.98~~

Love and Basketball (New Line Platinum Series)
DO NOT USE; Release date: 2000-10-10; DVD
Best price: $6.10
Price in other shops: ~~$14.98~~

Something the Lord Made
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2005-01-25; DVD
Best price: $6.90
Price in other shops: ~~$14.98~~

The Pursuit of Happyness (Widescreen Edition)
Sony; Release date: 2007-03-27; DVD
Best price: $4.01
Price in other shops: ~~$14.94~~

Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs

Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Genius; Release date: 2009-01-27; DVD
Best price: $10.18
Price in other shops: ~~$28.95~~

Original Soundtrack - Jazz on a Summer's Day
Release date: 2004-06-07; Music CD
Best price: $9.13
Price in other shops: ~~$12.98~~

Anita O'Day - Live at Ronnie Scott's
Image Entertainment; Release date: 2006-12-26; DVD
Best price: $8.44
Price in other shops: ~~$19.99~~

Anita O'Day - Anita Sings the Most
Release date: 1990-10-25; Music CD
Best price: $6.20
Price in other shops: ~~$11.98~~

Anita O'Day - Anita O'Day's Finest Hour
Release date: 2000-09-26; Music CD
Best price: $6.34
Price in other shops: ~~$11.98~~

Live in Tokyo '63
Release date: 2008-02-19; DVD
Best price: $9.86
Price in other shops: ~~$15.98~~

Anita O'Day - Live in Tokyo '63
Release date: 2007-03-06; Music CD
Best price: $9.52
Price in other shops: ~~$15.98~~

Thelonious Monk - Straight No Chaser
Warner Brothers; Release date: 2001-01-30; DVD
Best price: $9.89
Price in other shops: ~~$14.98~~

High Times Hard Times
by Anita O'Day, George Eells
Limelight Editions; Published: 2004-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.22
Price in other shops: ~~$20.00~~