The historic 1369 Jazz Club, Inman Sq., Cambridge, documentary screening of “A Place for Jazz”—it is now the 1369 Coffee House—Plus a 4tet of Boston musicians in a set of today’s Jazz.

CMS is proud to show this historic documentary about the 1369 Jazz Club, circa 1980’s.

It was also endorsed by the 1369 Coffee House in the same location in Inman Sq., Cambridge.

A Place For Jazz is a 1992 documentary film by Richard Broadman. The film explores the vital music being made at the 1369 Club, located in Cambridge's Inman Square and active from 1984 to 1988. It features performances and conversations with local and visiting musicians including Steve Lacy, Bob Nieske, Archie Shepp, John Voigt, Joe Lovano, John Lockwood, Henry Threadgill, and Rebecca Parris, and provides a valuable insight into the scene and how the music was made, as well as offering an up-close view of the very colorful time and place.  

A TRAILER: Boston’s and bassist JOHN LOCKWOOD still performing today, can be seen in this trailer with Joe Lovano between 2:04 – 2:36!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdSGtEgoURk.   

The evening will open with a set by marvelous Boston Jazz musicians continuing the improvised tradition for today’s audiences to seek out and enjoy. Two (**) of the players performed in that original 1369 club!

** Charlie Kohlhase, multi-saxophones

** John Lockwood, bass

   Luther Gray, Drums

   Ellwood Epps, trumpet

BACKGROUND:

1369 Jazz Club's closed in August, 1988, existing between 1984 and 1988.

Featuring an unlikely combination of (epochal) jazz artists (e.g. Johnny Griffin, Joe Lovano, Branford Marsalis, Archie Shepp, Ricky Ford, John Medesky, and Henry Threadgill), a cult rock band (The Shy Five), poetry nights, and a lines-around-the-corner Sunday blues jam session, the 1369 drew audiences as unlikely in their diversity as the music they came to hear. Seated among the faithful might be professional athletes (Bill Walton), musicians ( Hubert Sumlin, Gunther Schuller, Freddie Hubbard, Art Blakey, Pat Metheny, George Thorogood) bikers, comedians (Stephen Wright, Jimmy Tingle, Lenny Clarke, Steve Sweeney), dancers (Jimmy Slyde), corporate leaders, academics, and movie stars (Diane Keaton, Liam Neeson, Leonard Nimoy).

 “A Place for Jazz” was filmed over the course of three years. Beginning in 1985 and concluding in August, 1988, award-winning filmmaker Richard Broadman, cameraman / assistant producer, John Bishop, and Harvard University Jazz Program director Michael Haggerty, recorded live performances and in-depth interviews with local musicians, club staff, audience members, and some of the most important Jazz artists of the time. Among those interviewed and performing live are Joe Lovanno, Archie Shepp, Steve Lacy, Henry Threadgill, Mel Lewis, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Andrew Cyrille, Kenny Werner, Ricky Ford, and Fred Hopkins.

Following a premiere in Cambridge at the Brattle Theater in the spring of 1991, A Place for Jazz played to favorable reviews at Canada's Montreal Jazz Festival, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Festival. While the movie demonstrated it's artistic, historical, and commercial promise, owing to filmmaker Richard Broadman's untimely passing, distribution and licensing agreements were never completed and/or eventually lapsed.

Over the 21 years since its original theatrical release, the message of the movie – that there needs to be a place for America's classical music, seems both prescient and timely. It is the hope and objective of the producers of the film, the friends and family of filmmaker Richard Broadman.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Richard Broadman's work spanned subjects as diverse as the social history of urban redevelopment (“Mission Hill and the Miracle of Boston” (1979) and “Down the Projects” (1983)) to the changing relationships between women and men (“Love Stories: Women, Men and Romance” (1987)), to the social and ecological history of public waterworks (“Water and the Dream of the Engineers” (1983)). 

"In the local film community, Broadman is considered a pioneer, a visionary, and an inspiration." -- Remembering Richard Broadman, NewEnglandFilm.com, 03/01/2000, Holly Madden. 

In the opinion of Ted Reed, one of Broadman's close friends, "A Place for Jazz," ....was one of Broadman's best documentaries and the one he was closest to".

Richard Broadman, Producer / Director, Film Historian, Professor The Museum School, Boston Film and Video Foundation, www.der.org

John Bishop, Cameraman, Documentary Filmmaker, see "Land Where The Blues Began" (with Alan Lomax, Worth Long),  Ethnographer, Professor, UCLA, 2003 - 2011, www.media-generation.net

Dennis Steiner, Producer, Co-Owner, 1369 Jazz Club, Jazz Videographer

Jay Hoffman, Producer, Co-Owner, 1369 Jazz Club, Saxophonist

Bob Pollak, Producer, Co-Owner, 1369 Jazz Club

Michael Haggerty, Producer / Narrator, Former Jazz Program Director, WHRB, Harvard University, "Under Paris Skies: Conversation with [Kenny] Clarke", The Black Perspective in Music, 13 [Fall 1985]: 195-221

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