PROGRAM NOTE
Montmartre Jazz Club in Copenhagen, Denmark was renowned for being the ‘center of European Jazz’. It was a legendary jazz club until the mid 1970s but 30 years have passed since it closed down. Niels Lan Doky, a Danish jazz pianist invited the masters Johnny Griffin, Albert Heath, Toots Thielemans and so on and prepared a glamorous concert. At the end of a practise full of vicissitudes, they play a stunning and impassioned concert and the memories of Montmartre Jazz Club are dimly recollected. In particular, a Norwegian singer Lisa Nilsson s wonderful voice, as well as 76-year-old Jonny Griffin showing a passionate musical performance, and 82-year-old Toots Thielemans always having a laugh, are unforgettable. Niels Lan Doky, a pianist who visited Korea for a concert in 2006 took charge as director and created these well-made images. Just as Toots Thielemans expressed it as ‘between a smile and a tear’, the film is full of melancholy about something fading away and about an optimism transcending time and space through music.
