Improvising the Score

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A01=Gretchen L. Carlson
Afterglow
Alan Rudolph
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu
Antonio Sanchez
Author_Gretchen L. Carlson
Birdman
Category=ATFA
Category=ATFX
Category=AVC
Category=AVLP
Category=JBCC1
cinematic music
Dick Hyman
Duke Ellington
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
film
Hannah and Her Sisters
improvisation
jazz
John Lewis
Louis Malle
Mark Isham
Miles Davis
Mo' Better Blues
music
score
Spike Lee
Terence Blanchard
Thelonious Monk
When the Levees Broke
Woody Allen

Product details

  • ISBN 9781496840844
  • Weight: 151g
  • Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
  • Publication Date: 27 Jun 2022
  • Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
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On December 4, 1957, Miles Davis revolutionized film soundtrack production, improvising the score for Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud. A cinematic harbinger of the French New Wave, Ascenseur challenged mainstream filmmaking conventions, emphasizing experimentation and creative collaboration. It was in this environment during the late 1950s to 1960s, a brief "golden age" for jazz in film, that many independent filmmakers valued improvisational techniques, featuring soundtracks from such seminal figures as John Lewis, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington. But what of jazz in film today? 

Improvising the Score: Rethinking Modern Film Music through Jazz provides an original, vivid investigation of innovative collaborations between renowned contemporary jazz artists and prominent independent filmmakers. The book explores how these integrative jazz-film productions challenge us to rethink the possibilities of cinematic music production. In-depth case studies include collaborations between Terence Blanchard and Spike Lee (Malcolm X, When the Levees Broke), Dick Hyman and Woody Allen (Hannah and Her Sisters), Antonio Sanchez and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman), and Mark Isham and Alan Rudolph (Afterglow). 

The first book of its kind, this study examines jazz artists’ work in film from a sociological perspective, offering rich, behind-the-scenes analyses of their unique collaborative relationships with filmmakers. It investigates how jazz artists negotiate their own "creative labor," examining the tensions between improvisation and the conventionally highly regulated structures, hierarchies, and expectations of filmmaking. Grounded in personal interviews and detailed film production analysis, Improvising the Score illustrates the dynamic possibilities of integrative artistic collaborations between jazz, film, and other contemporary media, exemplifying its ripeness for shaping and invigorating twenty-first-century arts, media, and culture.
Gretchen L. Carlson is a musicologist and professor of music history and culture at Towson University. She has published articles on jazz and film in the Journal of the Society for American Music and Jazz and Culture. An active pianist, Carlson balances her research and teaching with solo and collaborative performance and maintains a robust private piano studio.

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