BLOWIN’ AT THE ROCCO: Saturday Night is an online documentary prototype funded by Screen Australia (AFC).
Digital Writer/Director TATIANA PENTES
Original Jazz Music SERGEI ERMOLAEFF
Dramaturg BRUCE JOHNSON
The documentary (prototype) seeks to exploit and enhance the creative potentials of digitally produced music, sound, image and text relationships in an interactive online Broadband environment. BLOWIN' AT THE ROCCO online provides an innovative approach to the conventional narrative and documentary forms. In BLOWIN’ AT THE ROCCO: Saturday Night, the participant/ player will experience new possibilities produced through the slippage across a series of interactive screen surfaces, engaging the participant/player in a spatial relationship with the program. The participant/player discovers the origins of Sydney Jazz milieu through the eyes of Serge Ermoll Jr. (Jazz Pianist/ Private Investigator) during, smoky sophisticated bohemian, Sydney circa 1968. In addition the user is revealed eight tracks of original Australian jazz, recorded live at the El Rocco Jazz Cellar, 1968.
BLOWIN’ AT THE ROCCO: Saturday Night is an online documetary [broadband] authored for delivery on the Internet. The participant/player is provoked to discover the origins & evolution of the Sydney Jazz milieu through the eyes of enfant terrible Serge Ermoll Jr. (Jazz Pianist/ Private Investigator) - the point of departure - smoky sophisticated bohemia of the 1960’s. Serge Jr., resident pianist with a Saturday night trio tickling the ivories at the El Rocco, could often be found moonlighting as a detective for a prominent Sydney judge. Moving between narrative & documentary forms, the stories are divulged through the exploration of eight jazz tracks/ eight narratives, revealing perspectives on the emergence of a uniquely Australian modern sound/ culture. The work is inspired by the BLOWIN’ AT THE ROCCO: Saturday Night album - recorded live after an evening playing at the El Rocco Jazz Cellar, Kings Cross, 1968 & an early milestone in Australian jazz music. A vision of Sydney’s cult of cool in the swinging sixties, the work documents mythic, literary, filmic, musical, radiophonic, televisual and personal images of the Australian jazz scene. The imagery evokes the generational complexity & tension that produced the fresh and vital jazz sounds of the El Rocco, the only six night a week Jazz Cellar in Sydney, seeding many of the early Australian Jazz groups. The original musical score was recorded live by Serge Ermoll Jr at the El Rocco Jazz Cellar, 1968.
