definitive jazz films that extend the magical spell of the Monterey Jazz Festival.

Jazz music has been the score to many-a-great films, including The Hustler, Blow-Up,Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud, Last Tango in Paris and Sweet Smell of Success. But that doesn’t necessarily make them jazz films.

Those would be films that are, primarily, about jazz music and its makers. Below are seven of them (plus a bunch more thrown in for good measure) that can serve as greater immersion into the world of jazz.

Jazz on a Summer’s Day

Born in 1954, the Newport Jazz Festival is even older than the Monterey Jazz Festival. This 1960 concert film by Bert Stern captures the 1958 iteration in Rhode Island, with gorgeous shots and sounds of performances by Anita O’Day, Dinah Washington, Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, Gerry Mulligan, Mahalia Jackson and others. Those are interspersed with shots of sophisticated New Englanders and New Yorkers in capri pants, wool jackets and sunglasses, smoking, carousing and swaying to the music. It’s such an evocative work that in 1999 is was selected for preservation by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Whiplash

This small-budgeted, 2014 Sundance breakout film is about an aspiring, young jazz drummer (Miles Teller) battling over his commitment to music with his mercurial music school instructor (J.K. Simmons, who won an Oscar for his portrayal).

Some critics and musicians have objected to its suggestions about music mastery and jazz history, but most have lauded it as a strong study of character and music. And that scene in which the the student breaks free (musically speaking) from the oppressive master on “Caravan,” is a sequence precisely edited into one of the most virtuosic depictions of music on film. Its writer/director, Damien Chazelle, continued in the jazz vein afterward with his next project, La La Land.

Mo Betta Blues

This 1990 film followed Spike Lee’s acclaimed School Daze and Do the Right Thing with a calmer, cooler, adult sensibility, but with his characteristic vivid colors, gliding camerawork and editing innovations intact. It follows New York trumpeter Bleek Gilliam (Denzel Washington) as he navigates the demands of his music career, a band in rebellion, a manager in trouble, an audience distracted by hip-hop, and two women who he’s involved with. It clearly displays Lee’s affection for the music, which comes from the Branford Marsalis Quartet, with Denzel’s trumpet parts coming from longtime Lee collaborator Terence Blanchard.

Cabin in the Sky

Based on a Broadway musical, Vincente Minnelli directed this 1943 film in which Ethel Waters and Lena Horne duel over the affections of the same conflicted man, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, who’s given a second chance to repent for his worldly sins.

It is notable for having a mostly black cast, including the leads, and was banned especially in the South for that reason, and it went out of print until it was re-released on DVD in 2006. But its musical pedigree is high, with showcases by Waters, Horne, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and his Orchestra.

A Great Day in Harlem

The 1958 photograph titled “A Great Day in Harlem,” Art Kane’s snapshot of 57 influential jazz musicians in front of a brownstone, is one of the most iconic depictions of a moment in the life of a musical genre. The 1994 documentary by Jean Bach re-creates that day in home film footage from Milt Hinton and interviews with many of the subjects, who included Thelonious Monk, Bud Freeman, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Coleman Hawkins, Mary Lou Williams, Lester Young. Only Benny Golson and Sonny Rollins are still around from that photo. Which makes the whole documentation of those people even more valuable.

Lady Sings the Blues

Diana Ross only added more shine to her stardom when she plumbed the depths and the heights of Billie Holiday’s life in this biopic about the jazz singer, directed by Sidney J. Furie and co-produced by Berry Gordy. Based on her 1956 autobiography, the 1972 film chronicles her tough upbringing in brothels, her lifelong troubles from heroin addiction, her disturbing forays into Southern racism, her relationship with her manager and husband (played by Billie Dee Williams), and of course her expressive and aching singing.

The film helped embody the archetypal musical biopic for many years to come, was nominated for five Academy Awards, and spawned a chart-topping soundtrack of covers sung by Ross.

Round Midnight

Dexter Gordon stars as a grizzled but genius jazz saxophonist (a composite of Lester Young and Bud Powell) in 1950s Paris, France, whose life is falling to pieces even as he finds greater heights in his music. Struggling with drugs and booze, he finds a job playing a little club called The Blue Note, and is befriended by a French jazz fan who tries to help by staying close to him. Roger Ebert said of Bertrand Tavernier’s 1956 film, “It’s the best movie about jazz that I’ve ever seen.”

Herbie Hancock won an Academy Award for the music and score, the soundtrack won a Grammy, and Gordon was nominated for an Academy Award for his leading role.

Encore:

Bird stars Forest Whitaker as Charlie “Bird” Parker in Clint Eastwood’s well-respected 1988 biopic. Miles Ahead is Don Cheadle’s 2016 project in which he portrays a comeback period in the life of legendary trumpeter Miles Davis. Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser is a 1988 documentary spun from a trove of archival footage that was found in the 1980s, and distributed by Clint Eastwood. 1961’s Paris Blues stars Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman as jazz musician ex-patriots in Paris trying to decide between the women they love and the music they love. The Connection is an important 1960s landmark in avant-garde filmmaking by Shirley Clarke, as well as a look at jazz and drugs in New York City. Keep on Keeping On is a touching 2014 documentary about a period in the life of trumpeter Clark Terry as he mentors a young, blind and gifted pianist named Justin Kauflin.