『Peter Barakan’s Music Film Festival』

Having made her debut in the 1930s, when jazz was dance music, Ella Fitzgerald was an early adapter of bebop, developing her scat style to improvise along with the best. This documentary takes in the full arc of her long career, including the globally renowned American Songbook series of albums in her later years.

Gutbucket blues singer nonpareil, Big Mama Thornton is best known for her original superlative version of “Hound Dog,” and also “Ball And Chain,” which was famously covered by the emerging Janis Joplin. She was deserving of much more recognition, as this documentary makes abundantly clear.

The Montreux Festival, born in 1967 through the vision and determination of Claude Nobs, who was born and raised in this small resort town bordering Lake Geneva, has hosted a staggering array of musical talent over the years, and many of the stars make an appearance in this film documenting its history.

At the peak of his celebrity in the early 1970s, Leon Russell commissioned the unorthodox documentarist Les Blank to make a film about him, which was shot over a two-year period, only to be nixed by Leon himself, and eventually released only in 2015, after Blank had died. The film includes some rare live footage, and scenes from the recording of Leon’s country album “Hank Wilson’s Back.”

This black and white documentary, featuring much hitherto unseen footage from the Newport Folk Festival shot between 1963-65, details how the folk music scene underwent successive changes, idealism being overshadowed by commercial forces arising from the popularity of the Beatles, plus of course the meteoric rise and metamorphosis of Bob Dylan.

Omar Sosa is a Cuban piano player whose music refuses to be tied down to any one genre. The title of this film refers partly to the fact that he played percussion before switching to the piano, and his style, though percussive at times, can be equally lyrical, funky, experimental, and anything in between. This film covers both his past and his present, and is guaranteed to make you a fan.

This film admits to being a love letter to Bud Powell, the phenomenally talented bebop pianist whose career was tragically cut short for reasons mostly beyond his control, dying at the age of 41 in 1966. Regarded by his peers as a genius, many of his admirers talk about him and his music, in an effort to bring his name to wider recognition.

This is a premiere theatre screening of a programme from the 19th edition of the International Chopin Piano Competition in 2025, featuring three contestants, filmed in 4K and streamed worldwide by the Chopin Institute.

This 1971 film documents the legendary concert which took place in Accra, Ghana, on the 14th anniversary of the country’s independence, featuring performances by Ike & Tina Turner, Santana, The Staple Singers, Les McCann and Eddie Harris, and some fascinating scenes of the Americans interacting with their African hosts. The finale is an incendiary set by Wilson Pickett.

A documentary detailing the life and extraordinary career of Miles Davis, whose centenary year is 2026. Often referred to as the epitome of cool, his music continued to evolve through the years, Miles consistently refusing to be pigeonholed as a jazz musician, even though that is how he will be perceived historically.

Thomas A. Dorsey singlehandedly created the form of modern gospel music in the 1930s. This film, made in 1982, shows his continuing work, together with Willie Mae Ford Smith, his constant right-hand woman, universally known as ‘Mother.” A low-key but highly-rated documentary getting a well-deserved encore.

It’s tempting to call Donal Lunny a towering figure in Irish music, but the majority of his contributions have been behind the scenes, as a songwriter, arranger and producer. He also performs, primarily on the Irish version of the bouzouki, which he pioneered, and was responsible for bringing the notion of accompaniment to Irish traditional music. This understated monochrome study brings his important contributions to the screen.

Keith Jarrett’s iconic album “The Köln Concert,” recorded in 1975, remains a best seller to this day. The concert was the idea of Vera Brandes, who was an 18-year-old high school student at the time. This drama is her story, rather than Jarrett’s, but it brings to life the unlikely sequence of events that led to this classic record, in a very entertaining way.

This is basically a concert film, shot during the 2010 reunion tour by Carole King and James Taylor, accompanied by all the musicians they both worked with in the early seventies, and also including some vintage clips and interview scenes. Their many fans will not be disappointed.

The documentary footage shot during the production of the 1974 album by Brazilian legends Elis Regina and Antonio Carlos Jobim remained unreleased until 2022. Despite its classic status and popularity, the record, made in Los Angeles, was in danger of being aborted, as detailed with commentary from the participants in this film.

In 1984 American director Elizabeth Lennard visited Tokyo to make a one-hour film about Ryuichi Sakamoto for French TV. We see Sakamoto recording his album “Ongaku Zukan,” and in other pursuits around the city, not to mention a lot of shots of the Tokyo of the time, cutting edge then but almost entirely disappeared now. A fascinating cultural artefact.

2026 is the centenary of the birth of Chuck Berry, one of the definitive icons of rock’n’roll. This short film reveals nothing about his life, but does give us an hour’s worth of uncut performances of some his best known songs by the man himself, not to mention The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winter, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

A large amount of footage regarding the myriad exploits of Brian Eno in the worlds of music and art over the last 50 years is compiled by generative AI into a different film every time it is shown. Regardless of how it comes out, the result is always fascinating, and bears repeated viewing. Possible participants include David Bowie, Roxy Music, Talking Heads, U2, Laurie Anderson and more, and Eno himself is an inexhaustible fount of wisdom.

Though definitely not a household name, James Booker, who died in 1983 at the age of 43, was a pianist who spent the majority of his life in New Orleans, playing in numerous styles with a technical proficiency second to none, and referred to as a genius by people like Dr. John and Allen Toussaint. He had a number of issues that contributed to his failure to be recognised more widely, but this film gives a well-deserved glimpse into his world.

Based on her talent as a singer of folk, blues, jazz and other styles of music, Barbara Dane should have been a major star. However, she was unwilling to sell out her principles, and as a result remained a fringe figure until her death in 2024 at the age of 97. This lovingly compiled documentary by Maureen Gosling is a fitting testament to an important woman.

This documentary focuses on a few of the contestants in the International Chopin Piano Competition, held in Warsaw every five years, following them in their nail-bitingly stressful preparations.