Written by Ruth Griggs

There was a time in the 1950s when musical giants strutted the Berkshire Hills in Western Massachusetts. Be-boppers, folk singers, African drummers, blues singers, jazz legends, poets, and musicologists gathered at a place called Music Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts – just a stone’s throw away from classical music’s most famous summer festival at Tanglewood – to share their converging traditions and go looking for roots most people didn’t think even existed. In their search, they created not only the first summer-long Jazz Festival, and the First School of Jazz, but a new movement in American music. It was that kind of unique, magical configuration of people and ideas that rarely occurs in the arts, but permanently alters the cultural landscape. In this case, it changed the world of American music, how we understand the meaning of America, and how the world came to appreciate the art of jazz.

This elegiac documentary, which premiered in 2007, charts the legacy of the Music Inn, a 1950s haven for jazz and folk artists who gathered each summer to hone their skills and explore their musical roots via jam sessions and discussions. Through interviews and archival footage, Music Inn traces the inn’s founders and tracks the enduring influence of the famed Berkshire Mountains site that eventually became America’s first concentrated jazz school.

The film is presented by the Northampton Jazz Festival with a generous donation by Whalen Insurance.

Thursday, June 16, 2022
6PM Wine and Cheese Reception
7PM Remarks by Producer George Schuller followed by the Film Screening
Northampton Center for the Arts, Flex Space 33 Hawley Street, Northampton No tickets required - $10 Donation at the Door

For more information and a film trailer, visit northamptonjazzfest.org/music-inn-film