Jazz on a Summers Day

The Jazz Centre UK Film Club is officially launched with a screening of photographer Bert Stern’s Jazz on a Summer’s Day.

Still a classic of the genre it was re-released on DVD and Blu Ray in 2021. It documents many of the performances at the Newport Jazz Festival of 1958, opening with the cool chamber jazz of the Jimmy Giuffre Trio, with Bob Brookmeyer and Jim Hall. Other performers include jazz vocal greats Anita O’Day and Dinah Washington; Chico Hamilton with Eric Dolphy, Louis Armstrong with Jack Teagarden, Sonny Stitt, Thelonious Monk and Gerry Mulligan. The festival, and the documentary, end with a set from gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. The relaxed setting of the festival is interspersed with shots of the America’s Cup yacht races in the adjacent sea.