The Jazz Video Cafe – An Incredible Collection!

The good folks at Mosaic Records have long been producing some of the absolute finest collections of jazz music around. Their comprehensive boxed sets and Mosaic Select series often feature long out-of-print music and recordings that have sat in the vaults for too many years. If you haven’t checked them out do yourself a favor and take a look at their catalog. There’s something there for just about every jazz fan.

Today I was excited to find an email from Mosaic detailing their newest venture, The Jazz Video Cafe. Here’s the explanation, straight from the horses mouth:

Like millions of other people, we find ourselves filling up time strolling through video sites like YouTube. As content on the web has grown exponentially, the experience has moved from the joy of discovery to the chore of slogging through endless clips with misleading titles and poor quality. [W]e decided to create the Jazz Video Café to present videos worth experiencing as well as some that may be difficult to discover. We’ll see how this develops but to start we’ve showcased about 150 clips that we believe will be of interest, ranging from jazz performances and interviews to art, film and a small dose of comedy. There is a comments section adjacent to the video for comments which are welcomed and appreciated.

Sure, we can all go to YouTube.com and search for jazz videos ourselves. But it’s nice that someone is taking the time to put them all in one place to make it easier to weed through.

Here’s a particularly cool video I found on the site today of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Rouse working out the chords and arrangement for the tune “Boo Boo’s Birthday”. How cool to get a glimpse into the process!