Written by Diamond Davis
As I sit in a dimly lit theater watching, “Hot Club of San Francisco,” many thoughts come to mind. Describing the event to people would be like telling a story to a nice little kid.
When I walked into the Regina A. Quick Center at Fairfield University, I thought how pretty it looked on the inside and how much fun I was going to have.
The four films that we saw were divided into two parts. The first film, Now You Tell One (1926), which was based on Charley Bowers’s tall tales of gun-toting mice, was like a blow-me-away moment. I couldn’t really tell if Bowers’s story was real or a fantasy at all because the special effects made it seem so real, but there is no such thing where mice could carry guns or a man would really put his head into a cannon!
After listening to the musicians, I thought that they were brilliant, and that the music told me a lot about them. Paul Mehling, strumming the Modele Selmer Guitar, played so steady and composed. Evan Price, on violin, performed with a calm and radiant attitude. Clint Baker, on Chadwick Folding Bass, played with in a way that let us know he is serious about what he does. Jeff Magidson, on the rhythm guitar, seemed to play with an attitude that’s pleasurable. But the sweetest, fastest rhythm ever belonged to Isabelle Fontaine, another rhythm guitarist.
Overall, I would recommend that people see this fantastic production.