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Ernie Kovacs transformed television in its early days; Anita O’Day brought a new spirit to the art of jazz singing; and Lee Liberace dramatically performed himself even more then he performed classical piano pieces. All three were born in 1919, as were Art Blakey, George Shearing, and Betty Garrett. Tonight’s program will feature all these performers at their best. This is a “Scenes Through the Cinema Lens” event.
“Scenes Through the Cinema Lens” is curated and hosted by Krin Gabbard, who teaches in the Jazz Studies program at Columbia University. In 2014 he retired from Stony Brook University where he had, since 1981, taught classical literature, film studies, and literary theory. His books include Psychiatry and the Cinema (1987), Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema (1996), Black Magic: White Hollywood and African American Culture (2004), Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture (2008), and Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus (2016). At Columbia he teaches courses on jazz and American culture.