Jazz Appreciation Month - April 2022


Jazz Appreciation Month (fondly known as "JAM") was created at the Smithsonian Museum in 2001 to recognize and celebrate the extraordinary heritage and history of jazz for the entire month of April.


JAM is intended to stimulate and encourage people of all ages to participate in jazz - to study the music, attend concerts, listen to jazz on radio and recordings, read books about jazz, and more.



Photo Exhibit - Real Ambassadors - April 2022 - Free and Open to the Public.

Discover how the Cold War and Civil Rights movement collided when America asked Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman to travel as cultural ambassadors and combat racially-charged Soviet propaganda through their music.






Other Events:

07/04/2022, ore 10 - A Great Day in Harlem - (1994) Film Documentary 1 hour 30 min. Nominated as Best Documentary Film - Academy Awards 1995.

Director: Jean Bach , Narrator: Quincy Jone, Featuring interviews with: Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Buck Clayton and many recorded performances.


'A Great Day in Harlem' or' Harlem, 1958' is a black-and-white photograph of 57 jazz musicians in Harlem, New York City. The picture was taken by freelance photographer Art Kane for Esquire magazine on August 12, 1958.  LINK to the OFFICIAL FILM SITE

 A Great Day in Harlem (1994) recounts the story behind the photograph.

Art Kane, now deceased, coordinated a group photograph of all the top jazz musicians in NYC in the year 1958, for a piece in Esquire magazine. Just about every jazz musician at the time showed up for the photo shoot which took place in front of a brownstone near the 125th street station. The documentary compiles interviews of many of the musicians in the photograph to talk about the day of the photograph, and it shows film footage taken that day by Milt Hinton and his wife.

The photograph, A Great Day in Harlem captures the spirit of an era when New York City was the center of the jazz world, when music history was constantly being made, and when creativity was fostered by an intense and nurturing community of musicians and fans.

It was indeed a great day when musicians met and joked with friends, family, and community residents - in one instance even blowing a few jazz riffs - on a side street in Harlem in 1958. Like the photograph it documents, A Great Day in Harlem is a vivid portrait of a unique community.




21/4/2022, ore 10 - The Terminal - (2004) Film in English 2 hrs

Director: Steven Spielberg.  Starring:Tom Hanks, Catherine Zeta Jones

Victor Navorski reaches JFK airport from a politically unstable country. Due to collapse of his government, his papers are no longer valid in the airport, and hence he is forced to stay in the airport until the war cools down. He makes the airport his home and develops a friendship with the people who work there until he can leave.  

Why did Victor travel to New York? To get the autograph of Benny Golson, the only musician missing his father's collection of autographs of musicians from the photo "A Great Day in Harlem".


Other Links

Spotify - Classic Jazz Playlist (18 hours of the best classic and recent songs!) 


A Great Day in Harlem - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_KZ7J-PSU4      https://youtu.be/ZVYZyNBpnGg - 1 hour