Workshop “Where Did Miles Learn Music? Jazz, Schools, and the Hollywood Film” mit David Ake (Frost School of Music, University of Miami)

This presentation addresses the intersection of two cultural forms that came of age over the course of the 20^th century: motion pictures and jazz music. Recall that the first commercially successful full-length film to synchronize sound with moving image was called The Jazz Singer (1927). As the musicologist Björn Heile put it, “What cinema represents, usually accurately, are not facts but popular perception.” In the case of jazz, these filmic perceptions include not only how, why, by whom, and for whom jazz is created, but also where that music is created.
This talk brings these research streams together — perhaps for the first time — addressing jazz-in-school films as a cinematic theme, if not (yet) a separate genre. We’ll see that such movies serve as a type of jazz education in their own rights: By presenting images of, or narratives about, jazz in academic settings, these films offer insights into jazz’s evolving place, literal and figurative, in the world.

Pianist and composer David Ake has worked alongside some of the world's most creative musicians. Among his recordings are the solo-piano CD In Between; The Dark, from the trio EEA; Bridges (w/ Ralph Alessi, Scott Colley, Ravi Coltrane, Peter Epstein, Mark Ferber), Humanities (w/ Alessi, Ferber, Drew Gress, Ben Monder), and, most recently, Slingshot, a collection of solo-piano tracks and duets with bassist Boris Kozlov.

In addition to his extensive performance credits, Ake is an award-winning musicologist and educator. He authored the books Jazz Cultures and Jazz Matters, and co-edited the essay collection Jazz/Not Jazz with Daniel Goldmark and Charles Hiroshi Garrett. In fall 2015 he was named professor and chair of the Department of Musicology at the University of Miami's Frost School of Music. Prior to that appointment, Ake had chaired the Department of Music at Case Western Reserve University, and was a longtime faculty member at the University of Nevada, Reno. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology and M.A. in ethnomusicology from UCLA, as well as degrees in jazz performance from the California Institute of the Arts and the University of Miami.

www.davidakemusic.net