Vince Giordano: There’s a Future in the Past(2017)

Plot Summary

• Bandleader, historian, and collector Vince Giordano has devoted his life to music that was created before he was born: the early jazz of the 1920s and 1930s. His 11-piece band The Nighthawks is known as the hottest band in New York, if not the world; and Vince is Hollywood's go-to source for authentic period soundtracks (Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator", Woody Allen's "Sweet and Lowdown") with his monumental collection of vintage musical instruments and 60,000 arrangements. But between the moments of glory (The Newport Jazz Festival; a Grammy for the soundtrack to "Boardwalk Empire") is the constant struggle to find work, manage personnel, and schlep a van full of band equipment and 400 lbs of music to every gig, with no road crew. Vince, and a handful of others, have managed to keep this joyful, energetic music alive long enough for a new generation of young hipsters to discover it. And unlike when Vince as a young musician, they don't have to experience it on scratchy 78 rpm records; because they have seen it performed live by The Nighthawks, just as it was performed by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Paul Whiteman, or Bix Beiderbecke - with all the skill, passion, and virtuosity of the originals, but without the scratches. Vince Giordano is one-of-a-kind: gifted, dogged, single-minded, and like all geniuses, a little bit crazy.

Storyline

• A feature-length documentary about musician, scholar and bandleader Vince Giordano who, with his 11-member band The Nighthawks, has doggedly kept alive the popular music of the 1920s and '30s for the past forty years. Through Vince's story, the viewer will be immersed in the Hot Jazz and Swing that fueled Prohibition high-jinx and cheered up Depression-era America. And they will see what it takes to make a life as a professional jazz musician in 21st Century New York. Giordano's dedication, along with a handful of others, has kept this cultural phenomenon on life support through hard times, and introduced it to a new generation of Hot Jazz devotees and virtuosos who are laying claim to this joyful, energetic music.