The Modern Jazz Quartet: From Residency To Legacy
July 19, 3:15, @ the Gunnery EPAC

Open to students and the public free of charge. Supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

This summer the Litchfield Jazz Festival is saluting an important predecessor—Music Inn—a seminal program in the Berkshires in the 1950s.

For 40+ years, the Modern Jazz Quartet was referred to as the premier concert ensemble in jazz and one of “the world’s finest chamber groups in any kind of music.”  John Lewis, pianist and MJQ’s primary composer, said of the MJQ “we tried to make it a reflection of this country … a democracy where the group takes advantage of the best abilities of each of its participants.”  They applied that philosophy to jazz education when the teaching of jazz was just beginning. By the late 50s, The School of Jazz at Music Inn was established to carry on that approach as a way to give students an up-close intersection with jazz masters of the time, a tradition Litchfield Jazz Camp follows.

The film you will see today is a collection of remembrances, anecdotes and events primarily chosen from interviews conducted between 2003-05 focusing on the role of the Modern Jazz Quartet at The School of Jazz.