"In 1958 fashion photographer Bert Stern set out to make a film (his first) about the annual Jazz festival in Newport, Rhode Island. An attempt at a fictional film turned out to be an enduring classic music documentary. New Yorker Film have done an amazing job transferring the colors and the sound to DVD. This is presently the best jazz concert DVD available anywhere. Stern captured the essence of the title so adeptly with images of people enjoying the summer and intently or casually watching and listening to the performances which include  Thelonious Monk, Anita O'Day, Sonny Stitt, Gerry Mulligan, George Shearing, Maybelle Smith, George Shearing, Dinah Washington, Chico Hamilton, Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry and gospel singer Mahalia Jackson.. For any Jazz enthusiasts this alone would be a reason to own a DVD player, if they didn't have one already."

Perhaps New Yorker's most acclaimed DVD, the colors are bright, true and delightful, The image quality is superb. This is as close to being at the Newport Festival 1958 as anyone could get aside from actually being there. Black levels are solid... a few scratches here and there, but nothing to get your snapping fingers in a knot over. The extras are deep and I'm still sifting through them. All in all one cooool cat!...  out of

 Gary W. Tooze

Note: Some have noted some balance problems with the 5.1 soundtrack.

From Richard Malloy:

"While fidelity is generally good considering the age and circumstances of the recording, the DD-5.1 remix (the only audio track featured on the disc) exhibits an odd unbalancing of channels that's neither consistent nor seemingly an intentional aesthetic choice.  Initially, the balance shifts hard to the left.  Then, sometime later, hard to the right.  Then back to the left again.  And, when centered, it too often sounds like those poorest of faux-5.1 mixes, where an identical mono signal is sent to all channels at roughly the same level.  I cannot begin to fathom how this was screwed up in exactly the way it is -- almost as though someone had unwittingly leaned this way against the balance knob, then that way, then back the other way -- but it certainly adds weight to the notion that the actual audio track, as originally mixed and recorded, should always be included on any DVD release."