3- 9 March 2014
Stan Tracey: The Godfather of British Jazz (2003)
Stan Tracey: The Godfather of British Jazz is a portrait of one musician’s lifetime achievement. In a career spanning 60 years as pianist and composer, Tracey (1926 – 2013), recalls his life with unprecedented honesty. The film combines a mix of archive, landscape and interviews with musical giants such as saxophonist Courtney Pine, doyenne Cleo Laine and jazz eminence Humphrey Lyttleton.
Stan Tracey’s obituary, published in the Guardian, 6 December 2013 can be viewed here.
Born in 1957, John Akomfrah lives and works in London. An artist, lecturer, and writer, as well as a filmmaker, his work is among the most distinctive in the contemporary British art world. Akomfrah is well known for his work with the Black Audio Film Collective, which he co-founded in 1982, together with Lina Gopaul, Avril Johnson, Reece Auguiste, Trevor Mathison, David Lawson and Edward George. Since 1998, Akomfrah has work primarily within the independent film and television production companies, Smoking Dogs Films, (London) and Creation Rebel Films (Accra).
Alongside Akomfrah’s successful career in cinema and television, his work has been widely shown in museums and galleries including Documenta 11, Kassel; the De Balie, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Serpentine Gallery and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. A major retrospective of Akomfrah’s gallery-based work with the Black Audio Film Collective premiered at FACT, Liverpool and Arnolfini, Bristol in 2007. His films have been included in international film festivals such as Cannes, Toronto and Sundance, among others. In 2008, he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). In March 2012, he was awarded the European Cultural Foundation’s Princess Margriet Award.
Akomfrah’s two-screen installation Transfigured Night (2013) will be on view at Carroll / Fletcher from Friday 7 March. Click here for further information on the exhibition.
Visit John Akomfrah’s artist page at Carroll / Fletcher.