Faces in the crowd, above, from Jazz on a Summer’s Day  

The film maker who brought “jazz into the sun” died on 26 June

Sometimes there’s a synchronicity in cultural change, and Bert Stern who has died at the age of 83 was present at the point when the new jazz festival movement in the 1950s and jazz festival documentary film making first came together. George Wein’s Newport jazz festival was the impetus but Jazz on a Summer’s Day, Stern’s film released in 1960, was the ultimate document of its early dawning. Yet the film was so much more than a literal interpretation. Faithful to both the music and its imagery while redefining the latter Stern caught the moment. Stern wanted to avoid the “kind of depressing” classic jazz monochrome look. “This brought jazz out into the sun. It was different,” he said. Stern had worked as a photographer on magazines and in advertising but was keen to make a film to add to his portfolio and in keeping with this aspiration took film cameras to the 1958 Newport jazz festival although he initially wanted to make a feature film with jazz as its subject. While much of his later work would be in fashion and celebrity photography (including famous images of Marilyn Monroe for Vogue) his name is indelibly linked with the images of Monk, Anita O’Day and so much more besides within the scope of the film, with footage of a jazz festival crowd captured like never before. Jazz on a Summer’s Day is also that rare film where the imagery does not swamp the music but works intuitively with it, just another aspect of Stern’s groundbreaking work.