RISING TONES CROSS
A Jazz Film by Ebba Jahn
DVD
signed by the filmmaker
$24.90+$4.90
incl. shipping worldwide
Questions? Wholesale
orders?
info@EbbaJahn.com
DVD specifications:
NTSC/Pal all-regions (RC 0)
MPEG Audio 4.3 GB
Length: 111 Minutes
NEXT Film
Screenings:
Germany, Dortmund
IFFF- Intl. Filmfestival Femme Totale
April 17 - 22, 2007
Italy, Milano
April
Spazio Oberdan
via Vittorio Veneto 2
20 min. film excerpt
with William Parker on the occasion of his concert in Milano.
___________
Want
to invite
RISING TONES CROSS
to your
club
gallery
theater
festival
college
cinema
?
Reviews 2006
Zeit-Online
Maxi Sickert, June 06
Hamburger
Abendblatt
Holger True, 5. Januar 06
...ein
herausragendes Free-Jazz-Dokument...
Reviews 2005
wire UK
August
double bass
summer
All About
Jazz-NY
Andrey HenkinAnd
r
...RISING TONES
CROSS is a nostalgia piece for some, a valuable
historical document for others... The film is
romantic. There is a certain appeal and charme to
images of a dirtier, grittier New York. The scene,
always the scene, seemed to be more vibrant and the
musicians less weighed down. And the music is
wonderful, compelling stuff even for people jaded
about improvised music. Rising Tones Cross
provides some continuity, showing how jazz survived
when pop and rap and heavy metal began to fully take
over the
public consciousness...
Downtown
Music Gallery
Newsletter
3/25
> Read >
Thanks for past enjoyable
screening events:
Zürich, Switzerland, Nov. 3, 2006
Hochschule für Gestaltung HGKZ
Seminar 'Jazz On Film'
Hannover, Germany, Sept.
8 Jazzmusikerinitiative jmi
Kino
im Sprengel
Berlin, Germany June
2-5
Jazzfestival
INTERPLAY ! BERLIN
Avantgarde Jazz in Film, Art,
Live Concerts
Akademie der Künste
curated & co-directed by Ebba Jahn
Austin,
Texas February 4th
EFCA MUSIC presents at
Green Muse Coffee Shop:
live concert &
film
New York City April
3, 2005
DVD Release Party with
Roy
Campbell, John Betsch, Maria
Mitchell
Downtown
Music Gallery
Sells
DVD + CDs of all featured musicians
Wuppertal, Germany
Die Boerse June 11
live concert and film
ORT
film-talk,
June 12
New
York City June 12
10th
Vision Festival
Celebration Film
Series at
Anthology Film Archives
Delft, Netherlands
SMØRJAZZ June 16
Floratheater
live concert, film
and talk
Münster,
Germany
Filmwerkstatt, Horst Herz Masterclass
November 16
Dortmund,
Germany
University of the Arts (FH)
screening,
lecture & discussion
with film students
Tarcento,
UD,
Italy
19 Marzo/2 Aprile
Hybridaspace
live concert &
film
Bard
College
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
February
26/27
Black
Students Club Show
In
German:
Boerse/Filmfestival
Jazz Podium Maerz 05
Rainer Kobe
For
older reviews and more Films by Ebba Jahn:
www.FilmPals.de
|
This 2
hour 16 mm film is a documentary
composition of new jazz, New York as the city that
generates it, and the musicians playing it. The
thoughts of the saxophonist CHARLES GAYLE and
the bass players WILLIAM PARKER and PETER
KOWALD from Germany accompany the film.
>>See the
unique group formations
with all featured
musicians.
RISING TONES CROSS is preserving
some images and musical moments with DON CHERRY,
CHARLES TYLER, FRANK WRIGHT, DENIS CHARLES, JEANNE
LEE, WILBER MORRIS, and PETER KOWALD, who strongly
supported the production of this documentary jazz
film.
_______________________________
DOWNTOWN MUSIC
GALLERY
3/25/05 Newsletter:
BOY! ARE WE HAPPY TO SEE THE RELEASE OF THIS FIRST
ITEM IN TODAY'S NEWSLETTER...
Ebba Jahn's documentary of the 1984 New York Vision
Jazz Festival curated by William Parker and Peter
Kowald. Groups and musicians on film include Don
Cherry & The Sound Unity Festival Orchestra;
Jemeel Moondoc Sextet; Peter Brotzmann Ensemble;
Peter Kowald Quartet; Billy Bang's Forbidden Planet;
Charles Tyler Quintet; Peter Kowald Trio; William
Parker & Patricia Nicholson Dance; Burton; Roy
Campbell Jr.; Ruediger Carl; Daniel Carter; Dennis
Charles; Ellen Christi; Curtis Clark; Marilyn
Crispell; Charles Gayle; Wayne Horvitz; Masahiko
Kono; Jeanne Lee; Wilber Morris; Bobby Previte; Irene
Schweizer; David S. Ware; Frank Wright; John Zorn
The early 1980s were a period of
transition for the avant-garde fringe in New York.
The loft scene -the days in which Ornette Coleman's
home on Prince Street and Sam River's Studio Rivbea
provided workshops for experimenters to develop their
art - was drawing to a close, and the arrival of the
Knitting Factory and its explosive impact on the
Downtown scene was still a few years away. It fell to
the artists themselves to create new opportunities.
As chronicled in Ebba Jahn's 1984 documentary, Rising
Tones Cross, two such motivated visionaries were
bassist William Parker and dancer Patricia Nicholson.
The film centers around the Sound Unity Festival, a
precursor to the couples' current Lower East Side
bash, the Vision Festival.
It was the German bassist Peter Kowald, on an
extended sojourn in New York that included a hefty
formative role in Sound Unity, who convinced Jahn to
make a film about the upstart festival. "It was
clear to me that I wanted to have a German
protagonist and an American protagonist," Jahn
says. Her friend Kowald was the German choice,
naturally, but America's representative had yet to be
confirmed. "Originally, I had thought of Ornette
Coleman. But on the day I arrived, first thing in the
morning I met Charles Gayle, the most un-famous
saxophonist at that time in New York City." That
meeting, combined with a chance encounter with a
cameraman who was working on Shirley Clarke's Coleman
documentary, Made in America,
led Jahn to shift her focus "from the most
famous avant-garde saxophonist to the most
un-famous."
"Instead of simply a compilation of festival
footage - though performances by musicians like
Jemeel Moondoc, Don Cherry, and Peter Broetzmann
abound in the film - Rising Tones Cross was intended
to be a "tool for music education. "For
many people who saw the film in Germany, it was the
first time they ever heard this type of music,"
she says. To help facilitate this reaction, Jahn put
the most difficult music at the end of the film,
easing the audience into it gradually. She also
included a number of scenes intended to dispel common
myths about free jazz. For example when Broetzmann's
strapping 11-piece ensemble - boasting a tenor
phalanx comprised of the leader, Gayle, David S.
Ware, and Frank Wright - seems to be blowing
chaotically onstage, Jahn's camera pans across
Broetzmann's diagrammatic score to reveal an
extraordinary amount of careful detail, planning, and
scripting - the architecture girding the maelstrom.
And having overcome an initial distrust and some
reluctance to take part in the film, the enigmatic
Gayle is revealed to be affable, erudite, and quite
well-versed in jazz-history, a far cry from his dark
public persona and stage presence. "He was
perceived as a philosopher in Germany," says
Jahn.
"
In 1984, before Tonic or CB's Lounge or even the Knitting Factory
and Rudy Giuliani, New York City was a rough-and-tumble place filled
with a wonderful array of musicians in a state of hyper-creativity.
Some of them had come out of the loft scene of the '70s or even
earlier and were reconciling all the shades of the avant garde while
others were creating entirely new vocabularies still being
solidified today.
German filmmaker Ebba Jahn made 'A Jazz Film' that year with
interviews, musical performances and fascinating visuals of the city
before it became sterilized. For the film's 20th anniversary last
year, Jahn put the film onto DVD format, a nostalgia piece for some,
a valuable historical document for others. Many of the musicians
featured are still active players: Charles Gayle, William Parker,
John Zorn, Jemeel Moondoc, Irene Schweizer, Peter Brotzmann. And
unsurprisingly, the film captures many who have departed firmly in
their element: Charles Tyler, Don Cherry, Denis Charles, Peter
Kowald.
The two main voices of the film are Gayle and Kowald, an American
and a German playing improvised music in basements and lofts and in
the Sound Unity Festival, the precursor to today's Vision Festival.
The film is romantic. There is a certain appeal and charm to the
images of a dirtier, grittier New York. The scene, always the scene,
seemed to be more vibrant and the musicians less weighed down. And
the music is wonderful, compelling stuff even for people jaded about
improvised music. Rising Tones Cross provides some continuity,
showing how jazz survived when pop and rap and heavy metal began to
fully take over the public consciousness."
(Steve Smith, Andrey Henkin, DMG)
$25 Downtown
Music Gallery
_____________________________
|
1.
Video production in all formats for institutions,
musicians,artists,individuals
including
research, planning, camera, sound, editing, DVD production.
2. Teaching / Coaching for
film students & documentary - and short film producers
based
on many
years of
teaching experience at German film schools.
3.
Film Seminars/series
e.g.Music Documentaries
inspired
by films EJ curated for the festivals INTERPLAY! BERLIN
2006 and the Intl. WomenFilmFestival IFFF April
2007 - for details: info@EbbaJahn.com
4.
for
cultural organisations
experienced freelance curator of international film- and video art
pograms.
5.
for editors/Writers of all disciplines
journalistic
research assistance especially in New York and Berlin.
6.
One Week for Travellers:
CultureTour
New York
Info in German >>>
MusicWitness®
7.
Last
but not least:
Ebba
Jahn can be met at:
57.
Berlinale / Intl. Filmfestival Berlin
February 8 -18, 2007
Intl. Women Film festival (IFFF)
Dortmund, April 17 -22, 2007
For appointments:
info@EbbaJahn.com
more films
by EJ www.FilmPals.de
______________________________________
Best wishes to all projects of all
fall-06 film students and coaching clients...
Dortmund, Fachhochschule
Dept. Design, Camera
Camera in Documentary film
Münster,
Filmwerkstatt
Horst Herz Masterclass
Documentary film concepts
Zürich, Hochschule für Gestaltung (HGKZ)
Seminar 'Jazz On Film'
Erika Lach
Treatment music-documentary film
Miriam Sachs
Fine-cut trailer for feature film project
Jeff Schlanger
dvd-distribution
|
