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Emmy^®-winning filmmaker Gail Levin explores Cab Calloway’s musical beginnings and milestones in the context of the Harlem Renaissance and segregationist America using archival footage, animation based on caricatures by famed illustrator Steve Brodner and French cartoonist Cabu, and interviews. The animated Cab dances alongside Matthew Rushing, choreographer/principal dancer of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Uptown), who explains how modern Calloway’s movements were and his impact on hip-hop. Additional interviewees include Calloway’s daughters Cecelia and Camay; grandson and Cab Calloway Orchestra bandleader Chris “Calloway” Brooks; horn player Gerald Wilson; and The Blues Brothers (1980) director John Landis and band members Steve Cropper, Lou Marini and Donald “Duck” Dunne. The film introduced Cab and his music to a new generation, when he acted and performed as The Blues Brothers’s mentor, Curtis.

“I am especially delighted to bring Cab Calloway to younger audiences – and he does become quite alive through the inventive animation in this film,” says Susan Lacy, American Masters series creator and executive producer. “He, and his era, are such a vital part of our musical cultural heritage – and such an energetic one!”

“This film is not just another biopic in the sense of interviews and recollections, but a reinvigoration of the whole Calloway presence – a reprise of a timeless virtuoso,” adds Levin.

With The Cotton Club – where Blacks could perform but not attend – as his home stage, Cab became a star of New York’s jazz scene, and then a household name with his signature song “Minnie the Moocher.” Despite its tragic, taboo subject matter, the song broke into the mainstream and was even used in Max and Dave Fleischer’s Betty Boop cartoon of the same name, along with Cab’s dance moves. Breaking the color barrier with this “hi de ho” hit, Cab was one of the first Black musicians to tour the segregationist South. He published a Hepster’s Dictionary of his jive slang in 1938, starred in films including Stormy Weather (1943) with Lena Horne and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and played Sportin’ Life – a role George Gershwin modeled on him – in a 1952 touring production of Porgy and Bess, making “It Ain’t Necessarily So” an enduring part of his brand. With his zany theatricality – scat singing, jive talking, zoot suit wearing, straight-hair, head-shaking, and backslide dance (a precursor to Michael Jackson’s moonwalk) – Cab transcended racial specificity on his own terms.

In 2011, American Masters earned its eighth Emmy^® Award for Outstanding Primetime Nonfiction Series in 11 years. Now in its 26^th season, the series is a production of THIRTEEN for WNET, the parent company of THIRTEEN and WLIW21, New York’s public television stations, and operator of NJTV. For nearly 50 years, WNET has been producing and broadcasting national and local documentaries and other programs to the New York community.

Cab Calloway: Sketches is a co-production of Artline Films, ARTE France, and AVRO, in association with Inscape Productions and THIRTEEN’s American Masters for WNET. Gail Levin is director and executive producer for Inscape Productions. Jean-François Pitet and Gail Levin are co-writers. Olivier Mille is producer for Artline Films. Susan Lacy is the series creator and executive producer of American Masters. This program is made possible in part by the support of CNC, PROCIREP, ANGOA, and SACEM.

American Masters is made possible by the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for American Masters is provided by Rosalind P. Walter, The Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation, Rolf and Elizabeth Rosenthal, Cheryl and Philip Milstein Family, Jack Rudin, Vital Projects Fund, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation, Michael & Helen Schaffer Foundation, and public television viewers.

In July 2005, filmmaker Scott Hicks started shooting a documentary about the composer Philip Glass to celebrate his 70th birthday in 2007. Over the next 18 months, Scott followed Philip across three continents – from his annual ride on the Coney Island “Cyclone” to the world premiere of his new opera in Germany and in performance with a didgeridoo virtuoso in Australia.

Allowed unprecedented access to Glass’ working process, family, spiritual teachers and long time collaborators, Hicks worked with a skeleton crew and shot the lion’s share of the film himself, giving us a singular revelation into the life of this surprising and complex man. THIRTEEN’s American Masters: GLASS: a portrait of Philip in twelve parts premieres nationally, Wednesday, April 8, 2009 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). This documentary is a mosaic film portrait of one of the greatest – and at times controversial – artists of this era. The film coincides with the DVD release from KOCH LORBER Films.

“The music of Philip Glass is instantly recognizable. Its layered, repetitive notes are transcendent to some and unbearable for others. Yet, no one can dispute the influence Glass has over contemporary music,” says Susan Lacy, creator and executive producer of American Masters, a six-time winner of the Emmy Award® for Outstanding Primetime Non-Fiction Series. “This film offers a fascinating personal study of the dedicated artist doing what he does best – from making music to making pizza.”

Over the year and a half of shooting, GLASS follows the innovative composer with a casual, immediate honesty. The film features performance footage of Glass’ seminal collaboration with Robert Wilson, Einstein on the Beach, interviews with former partners JoAnne Akalaitis and Holly Critchlow, artist Chuck Close, musician Nico Muhly and directors Woody Allen, Errol Morris, Godfrey Reggio and Martin Scorsese.

Born in 1937, Glass grew up in Baltimore and was educated at the University of Chicago and The Juilliard School. After a period in Europe where he studied with the legendary Nadia Boulanger and the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, he returned to New York in 1967 to form the Philip Glass Ensemble. The radical musical group performed at various art happenings in the downtown gallery scene, where Glass cultivated his signature sound. His unique soundscape of reiterative structures was initially vilified but has since achieved international acclaim. Today, his versatile, prolific body of work spans multiple genres including opera, symphony, experimental theater and dance, film score – for which he has received three Oscar nominations – and even rock. His collaborators have ranged from Allen Ginsberg and Twyla Tharp to David Bowie and Paul Simon to Yo-Yo Ma and Doris Lessing.

A presence on Broadway, in Hollywood, at Carnegie Hall and the New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein was a major force in twentieth century music. His exuberant and dramatic style caught the heart of America, bringing classical music to thousands of people from diverse backgrounds. More than any American conductor before him, Bernstein expanded the audience of classical music while maintaining a deep artistic integrity.

Bernstein was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1918. His parents were first generation Jewish immigrants from Russia. Though he began learning the piano at age ten, his family hoped he would follow a more practical route, and sent him to the Boston Latin School. After graduating, he attended Harvard University, where he majored in music. His interest was in becoming a concert pianist, but upon graduating he began to seriously study orchestration at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

More important than any of the formal training, however, were the summers he spent in Tanglewood, Massachusetts, studying with the great conductor Serge Koussevitzky. In 1942, Koussevitzky invited Bernstein to be the assistant conductor at Tanglewood. Though very young for a conductor, his flamboyant style and emotionally charged performances caught the attention of others in the classical music community—one of whom was Arthur Rodzinzki, who appointed him assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

It was at the New York Philharmonic that Bernstein got his big break. Asked to fill in for an ailing guest conductor, Bernstein (then only twenty-five) conducted a difficult and energetic performance with only an evening’s preparation. Impressing all who came, Bernstein found himself on the cover of The New York Times — an instant celebrity. Within two years he was named the director of the New York City Symphony. He spent much of the 1950s conducting, teaching, and becoming involved in composing for non-classical genres. Of his many popular efforts of the time, On the Waterfront (1954), Candide (1956), and West Side Story (1957) are the best known. For On the Waterfront he received an Academy Award, and for nearly everything he did, he received the acclaim of an adoring public.

In 1957, Bernstein returned to the New York Philharmonic, where he was to make his greatest contribution to the music world. The versatile musical genius that had made him a success on Broadway and in the classical concert halls of the world, found its true home at Lincoln Center. For the next eleven seasons, Bernstein would energize the Philharmonic and American classical music in a way no other director had done. Taking advantage of the recent technological advance of television, Bernstein presented classical music to a wider audience. While he toured throughout the world, visiting seventeen different countries, he also concentrated on creating accessible performances for the average American. For both children and adults, he created shows which were both entertaining and educational. By the time of his resignation from the Philharmonic, he had conducted nine hundred and thirty nine concerts with the orchestra—an unprecedented amount.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Bernstein concentrated on the solitary act of composing, while maintaining a presence in the music world. He was often derided for his political involvement, which included his early stance against the Vietnam war and his support of the Black Panthers, but continued to draw crowds internationally for his entire career. On April 19, 1990 Bernstein conducted a fiftieth anniversary concert commemorating his beginnings as a conductor at Tanglewood. Three months later he died. Until the very end of his life, Leonard Bernstein maintained the verve that had invigorated the American classical music world and brought thousands of listeners closer to the music he loved so much.