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A tale of optimism in the face of incredible difficulty, KEEP ON KEEPIN’ ON serves as a testament to the extensive potential of positivity as it depicts the powerful friendship between 23-year-old, blind piano prodigy, Justin Kauflin, and music legend and teacher Clark Terry, 89.
Director: Alan Hicks
Share this film. Give others the chance to be touched and inspired by its story.
Support the American Foundation for the Blind and many other organizations offer assistance and information for those who are blind or affected by blindness. There are many ways to help out – learn more online.
Support the Jazz Education Network that “seeks to advance jazz education, promote performance and develop new audiences.”
Consider becoming or seeking a mentor in order to share or grow your passion -depending on where you are in your life,
Offer your mind with positivity, smile a little more every day, and encourage others to do the same. What you feed your mind defines and determines the shape of your life
For someone who says he has ‘zero experience in the industry,’ Alan Hicks seems set to secure success at Tribeca this year. His feature debut KEEP ON KEEPIN´ON follows 89-year-old jazz legend Clark Terry (Quincy Jones’s first teacher) over four years.
Read the interview with filmmaker Alan Hicks on Indie Wire.
“I became pretty versatile, so that people hired me to play certain roles. These may not have been roles that I would have chosen for myself, but I tried hard to do everything that was required of me. I suppose that if I had had the security and freedom I would have gotten into a different vein a little quicker.”
Quincy Jones sat down to talk about the discipline and personality of a legend.
Listen to our playlist with music from the film on Spotify.
“It was back in l961 that an author called Henry Pleasants wrote a book about jazz called Death of a Music. At that point in 20th-century culture he could have been forgiven for undue pessimism because jazz, more than half a century ago, was still regularly hailed as America’s principal contribution to world culture. Had Pleasants owned a crystal ball, however, he might have shocked himself with his prescience.”
Read the full article on The Telegraph.
“Musical talent and blindness have often been thought to be linked – and now there’s proof in the form of new research.”
Read more about this intriguing phenomenon on The Guardian.
Find out more here.
“When playing an instrument, being able to see is definitely helpful, right? For anyone who has fumbled about with a guitar, learned their first chord, their second, even a third and then given up when it came time to put all three together, imagine doing all that again, only without the help of the sense of sight. Then, imagine getting really good at it.”
“God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create—and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.”
Continue reading Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s opening address to the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival here.
"Masterful, [an] unforgettable documentary."
All About Jazz
