By Robbie Collin5:27PM BST 16 Oct 2014
On the stage of Kansas City’s Reno Club one night in 1936, so the story goes, Charlie Parker was brought down to earth with a crash. The ambitious young saxophonist, then only 16 years old, lost his way while improvising over I Got Rhythm, and the drummer, Jo Jones, lobbed a cymbal at him in frustration, which landed deafeningly at his feet.
The audience laughed and jeered, and Parker stalked out of the venue, crushed. He took a residency at a country resort, and used the time to "woodshed"; an old jazz term for intensive practice. A year later, Parker returned to Kansas City and performed – as a character in Whiplash puts it – “the best f---in’ solo anyone in the room ever heard.”
This dazzling, exhilarating drama from the young American director Damien Chazelle isn’t a story about the roles played by misery and humiliation in forging a great artist. It’s a story about what happens when people believe that’s how great artists must be forged: both the mentors raining down pressure and the pupils whose souls are on the anvil.
Andrew (Miles Teller) is a talented, dedicated 19-year-old drummer at the fictional Schaffer Conservatory of Music in New York City. He’s cherry-picked for a place in the school’s studio jazz band by Terence Fletcher (JK Simmons), a conductor who wanders the halls at night, his footsteps a metronomic clack-clack-clack, listening out for prospective young Charlie Parkers he can hammer into brilliance.
read more: http://news360.com/digestarticle/XAhum-lbf06Q93Ucg4_D5A
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