While Burns explores these stories, he also celebrates the music, taking it from the background to the foreground. Making JAZZ was like going from three dimensions involving narration, footage and interviews to four because of the primacy of the music, the filmmaker said. The narrative style that we adopted for JAZZ is in many ways dictated by the music. It was incumbent upon us to have the sound up-front, for the images and narration to accent the music rather than the other way around. We are proud of our long-term relationship with Ken Burns who continues time and time again to produce these extraordinary documentaries that share the American experience, said John G. Middlebrook, General Motors Vice President and General Manager, Vehicle Brand Marketing.
JAZZ is a celebration of a music that is uniquely American.
It s also a window into our collective history, in all of its complexity, that will hopefully help Americans of all ages, but especially our youth, appreciate the joy of improvisation and collaboration, in both music and in life. To further support JAZZ, as it has with all of Ken Burns s films, General Motors is also underwriting an extensive educational outreach program to bring this film and history to students around the nation. In cooperation with the Music Educators National Conference, General Motors will be distributing curriculum materials to 75,000 teachers nationwide, reaching over six million students. Music from the film will also be available for teachers for their curriculum, along with a specially edited compilation clip of the film. Burns and his team of producers, editors and researchers at Florentine Films, including writer Geoffrey C. Ward and producer Lynn Novick, have been working on JAZZ for the last six years.