Jean-Christophe Averty was a gift to jazz. The French director captured incredible performances in the 50s and 60s with a focus on atmosphere, as if he knew his films would be looked back to with a nostalgic eye by future generations. Another focus was jazz education – he filmed groups of musicians he knew would expand listeners' minds, like this one, playing in 1961 as part of the Modern Jazz Festival in Paris.
H.U.M was a group whose title took its name from the musicians' surname initials. Daniel Humair is behind the kit, a maverick drummer-painter. René Urtreger is on the piano, a long-standing French musician who once said, appropriately, "Jazz is supposed to be a music of improvisation, of madness." On the double bass is Pierre Michelot, a supreme talent who, like the other two, was a mainstay sideman for iconic American musicians passing through Europe in the years proceeding and following this concert. The group play songs from their own release, H.U.M !, as well as covers of tracks by Cole Porter and Thelonious Monk.
For them, along with another pianist, saxophonist and bugle player who join them for the second part, Averty pulls out all the stops. Superimposition, color work and a curious camera ... jazz memories are kept alive by these sorts of splendid films.
