Sun Ra 1968. Fire Music directed by Tom Surgal
Sun Ra 1968. Fire Music directed by Tom Surgal (Photo ©Baron Wolman)

Ahead of the release in theaters starting September 10, the official trailer dropped for Fire Music, filmmaker Tom Surgal’s documentary tribute to the Free Jazz Movement.

Although the free jazz movement of the 1960s and ‘70s was much maligned in some jazz circles, its pioneers – brilliant talents like Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane – are today acknowledged as central to the evolution of jazz as America’s most innovative art form.

Fire Music showcases the architects of a movement whose radical brand of improvisation pushed harmonic and rhythmic boundaries and produced landmark albums like Coleman’s Free Jazz: A Collective Inspiration and Coltrane’s Ascension. A rich trove of archival footage conjures the 1960s jazz scene along with incisive reflections by critic Gary Giddins and a number of the movement’s key players.

Watch the official trailer for Fire Music.

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