Ken Burns Biography
Although he’s not a musician, filmmaker Ken Burns became an influential force in the jazz world in 2000, the year that his ten-part, 20-hour documentary series Ken Burns Jazz premiered on PBS. The multi-part miniseries was the first major documentary to tackle the entire history of American jazz music. In addition to remaining popular in reruns and on DVD, Ken Burns Jazz also spawned a series of audio companion pieces, including a five-CD box set and 22 single-artist compilation discs.
Documenting the history of jazz was a natural project for Burns, since music has long played an important role in his distinctive storytelling approach, which incorporates narration drawn from vintage writings, archival film footage, and artful manipulation of vintage photographic images.
The Brooklyn-born documentarian began chronicling memorable stories from America’s history in the 1980s, when he won Academy Awards for his films Brooklyn Bridge and The Statue of Liberty. In the ’90s, he won massive acclaim for his ambitious nine-part series The Civil War. 1994’s epic Baseball was similarly celebrated, as were shorter-form documentaries on such subjects as Huey Long, the United States Congress, Thomas Hart Benton, the early days of radio, Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mark Twain, boxer Jack Johnson, the National Parks, Prohibition era and the first cross-country automobile trip. In 2007, Burns unveiled his most ambitious undertaking to date, the World War II documentary series The War.
Recent Comments