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A Great Day in Harlem

Presented by Austin Museum of Art and Alamo Drafthouse at Alamo Drafthouse - Downtown

October 4, 2010

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AMOA Presents: A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM

 

esented in conjunction with the Austin Museum Of Art exhibition “From Process to Print: Graphic Works by Romare Bearden” on view Aug. 28 - Nov. 14, 2010. Your $5 admission ticket includes admission to this exhibit.

It was a Summer day in New York City, 1958. A young photographer paced nervously in front of a Harlem brownstone. He had spread word that he hoped to take a picture for a special edition of Esquire magazine commemorating the golden age of jazz. Yet it was ten in the morning, long before most jazz players were up, and a meager turnout was feared. To everyone's surprise, scores of musicians assembled to create what is now a world-famous, "class photograph" of America's jazz legends.

A Great Day in Harlem zooms in and out of this astonishing photograph, interweaving archival performance footage, remarkable never-before-seen home-movie footage of the photograph being taken, and rare interviews with jazz masters present that day such as Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey. Through this photograph, viewers will come to know some of the century's most influential musicians. We meet such luminaries as Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charles Mingus, Marian McPartland, Gerry Mulligan, Mary Lou Williams, Maxine Sullivan, and Thelonious Monk. The result is a richly textured recreation of the event and the presentation of a cross-section of people and musical styles that comprised the evolution of jazz in the 20th century - and beyond.