My Name Is Albert Ayler | Telescope Film
My Name Is Albert Ayler

My Name Is Albert Ayler

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  • Sweden
  • 2006
  • · 79m

Director Kasper Collin
Cast Donald Ayler, Edward Ayler, Bill Folwell, Elliott Landy, Lionel Marshall, Bernard Stollman
Genre Documentary, Music

The prophetic jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, who today is seen as one of the most important innovators in jazz, was obsessed with his radical music and by the thought that people one day would understand it. In 1962 he recorded his first album in Sweden. Eight years later he was found dead in New York's East River, aged 34. (TCM)

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What are critics saying?

90

Village Voice by Aaron Hillis

Kasper Collin's melancholy, beautiful feature debut does more than just chronicle this undervalued musician; it brings Ayler and his message of spiritual unity back to life.

90

The New Yorker by Richard Brody

Though the end of the film seems rushed—its seventy-nine minutes could have gone on for hours—it is nonetheless a cause for rejoicing.

80

The Telegraph

My Name Is Albert Ayler is a loving and elegantly crafted documentary.

80

The New York Times

Named after one of his albums and built around snippets of audio interviews with Mr. Ayler, it attempts and often achieves a fresh, playful style that’s equally informed by jazz traditions and Mr. Ayler’s urge to shatter them.

80

New York Magazine (Vulture)

Kasper Collin’s documentary puts a human face on Ayler’s legacy.

80

Variety by Phil Gallo

My Name is Albert Ayler brings a sense of logic and humanity to a man whose music was as unsettling as it was untethered to the tenets of jazz.

80

Time Out

The portrait that emerges is refreshingly clear-eyed yet highly insular.