Jazz has gone behind masks and especially - behind screens - going largely online in the past year.
As more and more of us are getting vaccinated and looking to venture out for in-person meeting, and eventually, events, this spring seems to be the booming culmination of many of the socially distant creative forces.
It includes the event that will be streamed by SFJazz and the National Endowment for the Arts of the 2021 NEA Jazz Masters concert and celebration - also broadcast on WZUM radio, Thursday April 22 at 8pm.
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust is reaching back to some great films for online viewing in support of the Harris Theater, downtown - the 2015 documentary “Mary Lou Williams: the Lady Who Swings the Band,” and the chronicle of the Newport jazz Festival 1958, “Jazz on a Summer’s Day.” Also, the BNY Mellon JazzLive at Home Series has continued with features on Pittsburgh Jazz Stars.
Another online event is being produced by Con Alma for the Save Our Stages project - a subscription online fundraiser for a wide range of performers and stages - and the jazz episode includes a long list of current Pittsburgh jazz stars.
MCG Jazz has rolled out the screens for a Bob James/Benedetto Guitars special and a newly revealed concert from 2016 featuring the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra and flutist Hubert Laws.
And Kente Arts is partnering with Alphabet City to present Saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin with her new homage to Alice and John Coltrane, Monday night, April 26th.
As we noted earlier in April, the August Wilson African American Cultural Center has been a leader in online jazz and cultural presentations during the pandemic, and they continue with the Vinyl Report with Thomas Wendt through April. Plus, Lighthouse Arts has put up an archive of many of the great shows they recorded on video just before the lockdown.
There’s even more coming online, and even more in the live, in-person jazz scene in the days and months ahead. You can stay in touch with it by keeping your computer or smart phone bookmarked to our website, WZUM.org, and especially to the Jazz Central Calendar.
As to one of those films, we have some insights on Jazz on a Summer’s Day from Sandra Shulberg, President of IndieCollect - the non-profit film restoration organization behind the 60th Anniversary revitalization of this musical and visual treat from the Newport Jazz Festival, 1958, released in 1959. It has being re-released in a revitalized 4K format and distributed to support independent movie theaters across the country in this time when smaller art houses are having difficultly being open because of Covid-19.
Sandra Schulberg also tells us about a unique role Pittsburgh has in the independent film world - including a huge cache of films stored from the now closed WRS Film Lab in Pittsburgh - including the recently re-released film NATIONTIME by William Greaves, a prolific and important African American film director, who died in 2014. His unreleased film about the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana is powerful and timely.
Carnegie Mellon archivist Emily Davis identified the original negative for NATIONTIME in the in the wreckage of the WRS Lab in Pittsburgh.
Plus, the hunt for missing George Romero films!
Thursday night at 6, repeated Saturday at noon and Sunday at 5 on “THE SCENE” on WZUM - All on the radio on WZUM!