“If you want to learn how to sing, listen to Sarah Vaughan.”—Ella Fitzgerald
A special tribute to “The Divine One,” legendary jazz singer Sarah Vaughan (1924–1990), will take place at Film Forum on Wednesday, Mar. 27, the 100th anniversary of her birth.
This program of rare film performances, compiled and presented by noted author, producer, and Wall Street Journal jazz critic Will Friedwald, will cover Vaughan’s five-decade career, from her roots in Newark to the height of her international fame. Also featured are some of Vaughan’s equally iconic co-stars, including Billy Eckstine, Tony Bennett, Michel Legrand, and Dizzy Gillespie.
The program will be presented just twice, at 1:00 and 6:30 p.m.
“From the moment she won the Apollo Theater amateur contest at age 18, Sarah Vaughan immediately joined the pantheon of great jazz singers,” said Friedwald. “While Ella was the voice of pure melody, Dinah the voice of the blues, and Billie the voice of the human condition, Sarah was the voice of the Angels. ‘The Divine One,’ or ‘Sassy,’ as she was nicknamed, was the closest jazz ever had to an artist with operatic chops: She took a technique normally associated with Verdi and Puccini to extoll the glories of Gershwin and Ellington.
“Likewise, she took the pure power and passion of the great gospel singers and brought it to bear on earthly matters like love and the blues. Hers was a voice that often seemed to be more than merely human, and yet her greatest strength was not the purely rapturous quality of the voice but her down-to-earth nature; not her divinity but her humanity. She was the very spirit of human playfulness, of spontaneous melodic invention, and of effortless swing.”
Friedwald writes about jazz and nightlife for the Wall Street Journal, and is the author of 10 books about music and popular culture, including the award-winning “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers,” “Sinatra: The Song is You,” “Stardust Melodies,” “Tony Bennett: The Good Life,” {Jazz Singing,{ and {Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole.” He has written more than 700 liner notes for compact discs, received 10 Grammy nominations, and appears frequently on television and in documentaries.
The Sarah Vaughan tribute, produced by Film Forum Repertory Artistic Director Bruce Goldstein, follows sold-out tributes to Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, and Billie Holiday, presented by Friedwald at Film Forum in past years.
For more info, visit www.filmforum.org.
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