19 original soundtracks by jazz stars like Duke Ellington, and The Modern Jazz Quartet. Classics like Escalator to the Scaffold, Anatomy of a Murder, A Streetcar Named Desire featuring Louis Armstrong, Kenny Dorham, Milt Jackson, Gerry Mulligan, Chico Hamilton.

Long before La La Land or Birdman, jazz was a perfect way to underscore and even enhance the action on the silver screen – not only in Hollywood, but all the way across Europe, too. Some of the best and most influential original
jazz soundtracks from the 1950s and early 1960s are documented in this unique 10-CD collection.

Beginning with the iconic soundtrack to Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour l’échafaud, whose leading actress Jeanne Moreau can be seen with the trumpeter on the cover of our box set, and leading all the way to Henry Mancini’s score to Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. In between you will enjoy American jazz greats like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Gerry Mulligan, and The Modern Jazz Quartet, but also legendary Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda with the score to one of Roman Polanski’s first films Knife in the Water, British jazz scores by Dizzy Reece and Johnny Dankworth, and soundtracks by French jazz greats from Barney Wilen to Martial Solal.