Cassandra Wilson
Cassandra Wilson is recognized as an unequaled vocalist, a jazz singer for a new generation. Her distinctive style and daring aesthetic have earned her wide recognition, including chart-topping albums, a Grammy and countless media accolades. In this Live recording she inspires with her trademark mix of first-rate originals and adventurous covers of other songwriters' works, this time picking material by Bob Dylan, Tom Jobim and The Monkees.
In "The Soul of A Man," director Wim Wenders looks at the dramatic tension in the blues between the sacred and the profane by exploring the music and lives of three of his favorite blues artists: Skip James, Blind Willie Johnson and J. B. Lenoir. Part history, part personal pilgrimage, the film tells the story of these lives in music through an extended fictional film sequence (recreations of '20s and '30s events - shot in silent-film, hand-crank style), rare archival footage, present-day documentary scenes and covers of their songs by contemporary musicians such as Shemekia Copeland, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Garland Jeffreys, Chris Thomas King, Cassandra Wilson, Nick Cave, Los Lobos, Eagle Eye Cherry, Vernon Reid, James "Blood" Ulmer, Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Marc Ribot, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Lucinda Williams and T-Bone Burnett.
In 1937, after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of a black man in the south, Bronx-born high school teacher Abel Meeropol wrote a poem entitled "Strange Fruit" that begins with the words: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root." He set the poem to music and a few years later convinced Billy holiday to record it in a legendary heartbreaking performance. Intertwining jazz genealogy, biography, performance footage, and the history of lynching, director Joel Katz fashions a fascinating discovery of the lost story behind a true American classic. Written by Excerpted from Coolidge Corner Theatre Program Update
Joni attended as various musicians paid tribute to her and her music. Among the performers were Cyndi Lauper, James Taylor, Cassandra Wilson, Richard Thompson, Shawn Colvin and Elton John. Joni also performed accompanied by a full orchestra.
David Sanborn & Friends - The Super Session II
Concert documentary of American jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson's tribute to the music of Miles Davis.
The film project under the working title of "Nightwalk" about the jazz music of the Afro-American Cassandra Wilson, was born of the idea to really create a fusion between music and pictures. The film team concentrate the contents of the film on the actual theme of the music, "Children of the night". This is not, however, a conventional plot rather an atmospheric series of pictures surrounding a figure who is wandering through the city streets at night.
