20130827: Documentary Review--Icons among Us

Icons among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense

1. American live action feature film, documentary, music, 2009, NR, 93 minutes.
2. IMDB: 7.7/10.0 from 31 users.  Interviews with 75 jazz musicians.
3. Rotten Tomatoes:  'No reviews yet,' and 60% of 33 audience members liked it.
4. Directed by Lars Larson, Michael Rivoira.
5. Among the stars are: Herbie Hancock, Wynton Marsalis, Esperanza Spalding, and others from NYC, Los Angeles, the UK, the Netherlands.
6. Excellent interviews.
7. Great performances by a dozen or so young jazz bands.
8. Good narrative on what it means to be a jazz musician today.
9. Trends
10. 1961 to 1988: decline of jazz albums down to nothing
11. One poorly documented website, Why Americans Don't like Jazz, gave the estimate that jazz was 3% of the music market in 2003.  The site also gives a well-reasoned argument as to why Americans like jazz less and less, while the towering dominance of American music makes foreigners (especially non-English speakers) like jazz more and more.
12. The film makes similar points with the interviews in the Netherlands.
13. The site statistics for 2012, shows jazz at 8.10 million units sold, versus rock at 102.50 million units sold.  For the stats shown, the total units sold for 2012 were 376 million.  Of the total (8.1/376.0) * 100 = 2.15% was jazz, so there was further slippage in market share from 2003.
14. Main points.
15. The efforts of Wynton Marsalis received quite a few positive mentions; I see this on websites as well.  Many of the musicians he plays with are children of jazz musicians, and the family aspect is brought home.
16. A point made perhaps 25 times is that jazz has moved on from the jazz of Coltrane, Coleman, Armstrong, and the rest from the 1950s, when jazz was a much larger part of American music.  The excellence of the young jazz bands underscores this quite well.
17. The film was initially rather depressing for me.  My introduction to jazz was in the mid to late 1970s, when jazz still had a much stronger market position.  I got to see live performances regularly, and to experience the flawless, brilliant playing of living masters directly (like 25 feet away in a whopping great music hall possessed of excellent acoustics).  That was when I was in graduate school.  Since then, I've had less and less contact with jazz; it even seems to have dropped off the radio.  The statistics on loss of market share, and loss of the attention of American music lovers is discouraging.  Just look at the lack of trace in IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. Jazz is almost a non-issue. However, this film did showcase quite a number of excellent current young performers who have strong skills.  So the genre is far from dead, despite the dearth of jobs in the jazz sector.
18. Five of five stars.  I would recommend this to anyone who likes music.

Cinematography: 10/10 Excellent where it needs to be.  The archival footage is just that.

Sound: 10/10 Excellent.

Acting: N/A

Screenplay: 10/10 Good interviews, good performances, good handling of the points to be made about current jazz versus jazz of 40, 50, or 60 years ago.  As the film points out through its many voices, the artists have to speak their hearts, and make their music meaningful to the audience.  This film ended up making me more hopeful about that.