You & The Night & The Music #22

About the mythic 'Night'

‘You and the Night and the Music’ is both a jazz standard composed by Arthur Schwartz with lyrics by Howard Dietz in 1934 and the name of a major annual event organised by TSFJazz radio. The original song was born in the Broadway musical Revenge with Music, which premiered on 28 November 1934, was briefly interrupted and then relaunched on 24 December for a series of 135 performances, and quickly became one of the Schwartz–Dietz duo's most memorable songs, alongside Alone Together and Dancing in the Dark. In the 1930s, recordings such as those by Libby Holman with Richard Himber's orchestra, then by Leo Reisman, established the song in the popular repertoire, before it was revisited by modern jazz over the decades, notably by Shelly Manne, Lennie Niehaus and Chet Baker, who offered a dark and introspective version that became a benchmark.

TSFJazz has adopted this title for its annual gala night, ‘You & The Night & The Music’, launched in Paris in the early 2000s as a showcase for its editorial identity and the past ‘jazz year’. The evening has established itself as a major event at the Salle Pleyel, bringing together a succession of established artists and new discoveries for nearly three hours, often accompanied by The Amazing Keystone Big Band as the ‘ceremonial orchestra’, and combining tributes (for example to Django Reinhardt), the year's favourites and revelations from the current scene.