Jazz In Exile: Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europe & Cecil Taylor à Paris + Intro by Ehsan Khoshbakht

Cecil Taylor à Paris (dir Gérard Patris, 1968)

Filmed as part of a five-part French television series on modern music, this arresting portrait captures avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor at the height of his expressive powers. Speaking from a grand but timeworn French palace, Taylor – shrouded behind dark glasses – responds to questions about Stockhausen, Bach, and Cage with a simple refrain: 'He doesn’t come from my community.' For Taylor, the locus of innovation lies not in European high culture, but in 'across the track' experience – the lived reality of African-Americans.

As Taylor’s explosive, two-handed performance pushes bebop into the realm of abstract expressionism, the film responds in kind. Patris (with editor Juliette Bort) matches the music’s intensity with sharp, abrupt cuts and dynamic pacing. Text, spoken credits, and visual collage echo the rhythmic improvisation of the Taylor quartet, transforming this short documentary into a fierce audio-visual duet between artist and filmmaker.

Big Ben: Ben Webster in Europe (dir Johan van der Keuken, 1967)

An intimate, inquisitive portrait of legendary tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, filmed between March and June 1967 in Amsterdam, where he would later settle until his death in 1972. Though the title suggests a tribute, van der Keuken's approach digs deeper – offering a poetic meditation on Webster’s sound and spirit. Visual metaphors abound: a conversation about the blues cuts to a knife being sharpened, while a visit to a saxophone factory fades from industrial clatter into the rich tones of Webster’s luscious vibrato.

A former member of Duke Ellington’s orchestra, Webster is shown offstage – cooking, chatting with his landlady, shooting pool, and filming with his own 8mm camera. When van der Keuken later integrates that footage, jazz and cinema seem to merge, revealing both the vulnerability and quiet dignity of a master musician in self-imposed exile.