Trailer:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_4oeYU_jfuBTHVhUHhkb2FWYlU/view?usp=sharing

Saxophonist Branford Marsalis not only is a virtuoso of contemporary jazz. He is an allrounder who likes to explore adjacent music genres and styles such as pop or European classical music. In the 1980s he played with Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Sting, later on with Tina Turner, and he wrote several soundtracks for film director Spike Lee, a friend of his. Ever since, he is known and famous for his unique velvety, melodic sound, as well as for oscillating between traditional ways and new arrangements, and for crossing borders between diverse musical languages, styles and genres. The documentary Branford Marsalis- The Sound Illusionist captures this exceptional musician on stage at jazz-concerts in his home town New Orleans, in San Fransciso, and at classic concerts in Europe. The film shows him as a private person with friends, while jamming with his father, jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis, and at his „Musicians’ Village“, an artists’ colony for homeless musicians who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina. It is a retrospect on his career, from his own point of view and with comments from his companions such as Sting, his father Ellis, friends from New Orleans and classical musicians.

 

 

Zauberbergfilm:
Film production with a focus on documentaries on music, literature and philosophy. Founded in 2000. Based in Berlin.

 

Reinhold Jaretzky:
Director and producer, specialized on documentaries. Teaches documentary film at ZeLIG school for documentary, television and new media in Italy.

Citations

Branford Marsalis: „Do you know in the heat that illusion that there's water on the road – have you ever seen that? And you see it, and everytime you get to it you think you know where it is and it's still ahead of you. And you just keep thinking ... - as a young kid I remember thinking: Oh, we're gonna catch that water! There it is! And you just keep ... - that's kind of how music is for me. You say I wanna get to this place and when you get there you realize: Oh, it's actaully over there! And you just keep going. You keep going, you keep working, you don't settle, you don't settle for where you are at the moment, because there's always a place to go.“

Branford Marsalis: “It's easy to find saxophone music now that has no melody at all. Those pieces are very popular in the saxophone community but I really have a difficult time. In my Jazz band we call those types of songs "Brasil nuts", because the Brasil nut has a very, very hard shell. And it is almost impossible to open it. And you bang away at it and you bang away at it and when you finally open it, it's just this little, gnarly, crappy-tasting piece of nut! So you spend all this work and you get nothing in return - and that's the Brasil nut. And a lot of these pieces are pieces where when you finish, you basically say: Well yeah - I played it. But you don't finish like: Well, that was great! Or: Oh, that was terrible! It's just: I survived it.“


Sting: “Branf has never been anything but a Jazz musician. I know that he was accused, when he worked with me, of becoming a pop musician, but that's not strictly true. I've never told Branf any note he played. I just gave him a harmony, a set of chords, the mood - and I said: Just play! So in essence I was asking him to be a Jazz musician. With a set of changes. That's exactly what he did. He's incredibly inventive. What he does have is an incredible economy of line - he doesn't waste ... there's not a lot of waffle in what he does, he's very economic in his lines. And very modern. And also kind of pristine - there's something that fits in with my voice.”

Sting: “I think Branford is exactly as he appears to be. There's no artifice with him. He is very in touch with his feelings, his emotions - and he will express them, very candidly, sometimes painfully. But you always know you're listening to a man's honest appraisal - of any situation, if it's politics or sport or music. He can be abrasive but none the less lovable, and extremely intelligent. And he's a very good friend of mine and I'd like to see him more often. I've worked with him about a year ago, at a Jazz festival. He came and signed in with the band and it was like putting on a glove that you've worn all your life. It was just a perfect fit, comfortable, elegant. And then he was gone.”