News :: Press Releases

For Immediate release: August 1, 2006

Jazz on Film at the Museum of the City of NY
Plus Harlem In The Himalayas at the Rubin Museum of Art gets ready for Fall season

Join us for some cool Sundays in August featuring Rare Footage

          8/06           Big Bands

          8/13           Small Groups

          8/20           Singers

New York, NY—Spend three cool Sunday afternoons in August with Loren Schoenberg, Executive Director of the Jazz Museum in Harlem, as he celebrates jazz greats via a compilation of unusual and rarely seen clips, shorts, and longer pieces on Big Bands, Small Groups and Singers at the Museum of the City of New York.

Presented in conjunction with the harlem is…music installation (in collaboration with Community Works and New Heritage Theatre Group, in association with the Harlem Arts Alliance), the film series will occur over the next three Sunday afternoons at 2pm.

SUNDAY AUGUST 6 • 2:00 PM
Big Bands

Europe has its symphony orchestra, and New York has the big band, whose heyday lasted from the late 1920s through the late ’40s, when Harlem’s legendary theaters and ballrooms became the proving grounds for any band worth their salt. Join us as we swing to the music of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Charlie Barnet, Benny Goodman, Andy Kirk, Jimmie Lunceford, and Dizzy Gillespie.

SUNDAY AUGUST 13 • 2:00 PM
Small Groups

Not every venue in Harlem could house a big band, and there were more than enough wonderful small combos to take up the slack. Among the most popular was Louis Jordan’s Tympani Five, who will be showcased in this screening of rarities along with the John Kirby Sextet, The Nat Cole Trio, and the bands of Teddy Wilson and Fats Waller.

SUNDAY AUGUST 20 • 2:00 PM
Singers
Join us for a tuneful afternoon with the themes sung by the kings and queens of the American Popular Songbook swung Harlem style.  We’ll have footage of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Billy Eckstine, and Dinah Washington and more!

The Museum of the City of New York is located at 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street in Manhattan. For directions: http://www.mcny.org/visit/. The film show is free with Museum Admission.

In related Jazz Museum in Harlem news, last Friday, July 28, 2006 featured the last performance of the Harlem in the Himalayas series’ first season at the Rubin Museum of Art. A quintet led by virtuoso trombonist Wycliffe Gordon shook the filled-to-capacity acoustic hall, with musical power and grace. Special guests Eric Reed (piano) and tenor man Victor Goines were superlative (Goines’s heartfelt clarinet rendition of “The Nearness of You” was awe-inspiring), while the rhythm section of Dan Nimmer, piano, Tadeus Expose, bass and Marian Feller, drums, more than held its own.

The fall line-up will be announced in a few weeks, but expect to read and hear about artists the caliber of  Marcus Strickland, Russell Gunn, Christian McBride, Ted Nash, Anat Cohen and Russell Malone.

The Harlem in the Himalayas series is curated by Loren Schoenberg, Executive Director of The Jazz Museum in Harlem and Tim McHenry, Director of Programming of the Rubin Museum of Art (www.rmanyc.org)