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Available Labor Day weekend!
The Gathering: Roots and Branches of Los Angeles Jazz world premiered at MIFF22 in 2019 as our Centerpeice film. A live concert in Waterville featuring Bobby West, Peter Jacobson, and Jesse Sharps accompanied the film. The film celebrates the legacy of underrecognized jazz genius Horace Tapscott and the South L.A. African American community around Leimert Park in South Los Angeles to which he devoted his life. MIFF is excited to share this Live Concert performance captured on two cameras that was edited and produced by filmmaker Tom Paige.
The Gathering, an informal and revolving group of L.A. musicians, are among the direct musical descendants of Horace Tapscott, the pianist, composer, and founder of the Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra (also known as P.A.P.A. or The Ark). Though he was a true jazz original, recognized by critics as “a completely distinctive jazz genius on a par with Thelonious Monk or Rahsaan Roland Kirk,” Tapscott never achieved their widespread recognition because he chose to devote his life and leadership to the South L.A. community, including Watts and areas between it and downtown L.A., birthing an African-American Arts and Jazz renaissance centered around the Leimert Park neighborhood. Among the musicians who came out of The Ark to greater recognition worldwide are Arthur Blythe, Kamasi Washington, David Murray, Azar Lawrence, and many more. With Tapscott’s death in 1999, Jesse Sharps who at times was the bandleader of the group, helped birth an offshoot group in 2005 that became The Gathering. Director Tom Paige started work on his film capturing the group’s unique, vibrant, and exploratory yet highly accessible jazz with concert footage from a 2005 celebratory event, and has continued for almost 15 years on his labor of love, featuring a wealth of priceless interviews and more recent live recordings. |
