‘Music For Black Pigeons’: Venice Review

Dir: Jorgen Leth, Andreas Koefoed. Denmark. 2022. 92mins

Most music documentaries are about performance: of an oeuvre, of a concert, of a life cut tragically short. Not many dig into the process of music-making as deeply as Music For Black Pigeons – the first collaboration between groundbreaking Danish experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth and his younger colleague and countryman Andreas Koefoed, which premieres in Venice’s capacious Out of Competition strand. In a series of recording sessions, stolen private moments and interviews with jazz artistes ranging from legendary saxophonist Lee Konitz to young bassist Thomas Morgan, the film probes at what actually happens when a bunch of talented musician get together to play.

We’re reminded of how itinerant the lifestyle of the professional jazz musician is – they’re always carrying cases, packing or unpacking, arriving or moving on

You have to go back to Ron Mann’s 1981 documentary Imagine The Sound to find a film that attempts so insistently to force jazz musicians to articulate how they do what they do. What lets Black Pigeons down just a little is its selection criteria. All of Mann’s interviewees had been involved with the free jazz movement. All of Leth and Koefoed’s have worked with Danish guitarist and composer Jakob Bro, whose music dominates the film. Bro comes across as personable, dedicated and hugely talented – but it feels like the film is smuggling a never fully-declared celebration of the Danish jazz connection into an investigation into musical thought processes.

That fuzzy double focus could limit Music For Black Pigeons’ distribution outside of Scandinavia, or at least pare it back to fans of Bro’s music, alongside true jazz heads, the kind of people who will miss no chance to watch how, say, Lee Konitz and guitarist Bill Frisell jam together and hear what they have to say about their art. Leth fans who stuck with the director even after his controversial 2010 documentary The Erotic Man will also want to see what he’s up to these days, though they’re more likely to scratch that itch at festivals and one-off screenings rather than in theatres. 

On-screen captions introduce the musicians and also tell us where we are, in scenes that roam from New York to Berlin to Sisimiut in Greenland. We see Konitz, Frisell, Morgan and pianist Craig Taborn in the studio with Bro, recording the latter’s 2012 album ‘December Song’. We see Konitz at home, before his death at the age of 92 in the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, playing the sax,; sharp in music if not in mind. Frisell and Morgan are caught in quiet domestic moments too, the latter hanging out his washing and doing pilates exercises.

We’re reminded of how itinerant the lifestyle of the professional jazz musician is – they’re always carrying cases, packing or unpacking, arriving or moving on – and also what a man’s world it still is. It’s left to brilliant Japanese percussionist and ambient music composer Midori Takada to fly a lonely flag for women towards the end. Intimate camerawork, inventive in its use of available light, reactive in its continual focus adjustments, mirrors the improvisational quality of the music.

By far the most compelling parts of the film are its formal interviews, conducted with the subjects framed chest-up against a neutral background. A few, like multi-instrumentalist Joe Lovano, have ready answers to the filmmakers’ metaphysical questions about how they make music. The most fascinating when they don’t. Mark Turner is asked what he’s looking for when performing, Thomas Morgan is asked how he feels when he plays. In each case a long silence follows, one that says a lot about how non-verbal the musical impulse is: it’s as if both are trying to drag their answers from a very distant place and then clothe them in the unfamiliar garb of language. When they do finally respond, their words are illuminating, revelatory.