Scenes Through the Cinema: Nat King Cole

BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, presents its Scenes Through the Cinema Lens series, "Happy Birthday, Nat King Cole," on March 5. The free film retrospective is curated and hosted by Krin Gabbard, who teaches in the Jazz Studies program at Columbia University. The screening is followed by a Q&A, moderated by Professor Gabbard. 

Starting out as a rhythm and blues performer, Cole crossed over to a white audience with “Straighten Up and Fly Right” in 1943 and then cemented his connection to white America with “The Christmas Song” (1946).  Audience will see his appearances in several dramatic films as well as segments from The Nat King Cole Show (1956-57), the first series on network television to star an African-American performer. 

When: Tuesday, March 5, 7:30 pm

Where: BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, 199 Chambers St.

Free.

No reservations necessary.

More information here [1].

Professor Gabbard is the author of Psychiatry and the Cinema (1987), Jammin’ at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema (1996), Black Magic: White Hollywood and African American Culture (2004),  Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture (2008) and Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus (2016).