Jazz at the Movies

JAZZ AT THE MOVIES - 2010 New Zealand National Jazz Festival commission 

Three afternoon performances at the Baycourt Theatre, Tauranga, New Zealand, Easter 2010.
The Paul Lewis Picture-House Band: Sharon Elizabeth, vocals/percussion & greetings card (with NZ birdsong recording); Kate Candy, violin; Chris Williamson, guitar/banjo: Lynda Wing, piano; Bryan Holden, string bass; conducted by Paul Lewis.
Programme presented by Jane Paul of the NZ Film Archive.

Part 1 Home and Away, a programme of rarely seen New Zealand 1920s short silents from the NZ Film Archive, many of them shot and edited by private individuals wealthy enough to own a movie camera, a rarity in those days, giving a charming and sometimes amusing glimpse of the colonial life of the period. The highlight of the sequence is the true story of two intrepid explorers who set out to drive around the world in an Austin Seven car but whose journey comes to an unexpected and watery end when the ship carrying them across the Pacific sinks! The score and songs, in appropriate period style, sometimes evocative of "Jazz Age" frivolity, sometimes of Edwardian Palm Court elegance, are a joyous evocation of  the kind of cinema bands that Lewis's mother and her siblings played in as teenagers in 1920s London. A ninety-two-year-old English lady in the audience was enchanted, saying the music was exactly as she remembered from her childhood visits to the cinema. 

Part 2 Orange Festival Ball, a 20 minute amateur colour film of the 1967 Orange Festival and Orange Festival Ball in Tauranga, as much a period-piece in its own way as the 1920s films. Title song "Come to the Orange Festival" and score in '60s showbiz style! 

www.filmarchive.org.nz