Programmed November 2022

Free Jazz

The free-jazz revolution that exploded in the late 1950s and early ’60s took music into hitherto unexplored realms of adventurous tonality, boundary-breaking improvisation, and ecstatic personal expression. Led by visionaries such as Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Eric Dolphy, and Milford Graves, free jazz extended beyond music and left its radical imprint on cinema. This eye- and ear-opening journey brings together definitive records of the movement such as Space Is the Place and Ornette: Made in America —both of which find a thrillingly experimental cinematic analog to the genre’s abstract sound—rarities like the long-lost French cult classic Les stances à Sophie (featuring a score by the Art Ensemble of Chicago), and visionary multimedia reveries like Promises: Through Congress , set to a late-career masterpiece by Pharoah Sanders.