Each Wednesday night we screen a music film, playing the audio through our very nice sound system. Diner by the Izakaya serves up hot ramen, and we’ve got high quality beers from the likes of Hudson Valley Brewing and Evil Twin at the bar. A little about the week’s film:

In 1968, Shirley Clarke shot footage of freestyle jazz great Ornette Coleman playing in concert, at home with his son Denardo and with quartet member Charlie Haden. The documentary was not completed until 1983, when Ornette was invited back to his hometown of Fort Worth, where a new arts center, Caravan of Dreams, was to open. Coleman wrote his symphonic masterwork “Skies of America” for the occasion. Its performance by the Fort Worth Orchestra is captured here. “Ornette: Made in America” is a film like no other, a multi-decade musical and biographical portrait of an artist expanding the vernacular and vocabulary of jazz.

Each Wednesday night we screen a music film, playing the audio through our very nice sound system. Diner by the Izakaya serves up hot ramen, and we’ve got high quality beers from the likes of Hudson Valley Brewing and Evil Twin at the bar. A little about the week’s film:

In 1972, Aretha Franklin sang gospel for two nights at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles. She was accompanied by the Southern California Community Choir, which was led by Alexander Hamilton and featured singer James Cleveland on piano, Bernard Purdie on drums and Chuck Rainey on bass. Aretha’s father, the Reverend Clarence LaVaughn Franklin, cheered her on, and Sydney Pollack, then a young director, filmed the concert. For various reasons, the images and soundtrack from this concert were not “married” until 2011, and Aretha’s “Amazing Grace” was not released until 2018. This film was born a legend.