Allen Woody / Swing in the Films

Description

Jazz music has always played an important part in Woody Allen's life and work. He developed an early passion for music and is a jazz clarinetist. What began as a teenage hobby led him to perform regularly in public in various small venues in his hometown of Manhattan, and to make occasional appearances at various jazz festivals. Allen's clarinet playing is clearly not on a par with that of his most beloved idols, and he has always been the first to admit it. "I don't say that to be funny," he once said. "To be as bad as I am, you have to practice every day. I'm a strict amateur musician. I don't have a very good ear for music. I'm a very bad musician, like a Sunday tennis player." However, he deserves enormous praise for his efforts to spread the legacy of jazz through his films, using a wide variety of historical sources in his soundtracks.