Exploring the career of a great musician
British journalist Russell Davies looks at the life and music of composer Artie Shaw, one of the most enigmatic, passionate and celebrated clarinettists of the last century.
Amongst interviews from members of his original bands and other music professionals, Artie Shaw: Quest For Perfection features the Grammy award-winner's last major interview as well as rare footage and musical clips from the 1930s and '40s.
The American jazz clarinetist and composer led one of America's most popular big bands of the late 1930s and early '40s, and was regarded as one of jazz’s finest clarinetists, despite a complicated private life in which he was married eight times and displayed characteristic obsessiveness. He was also an early supporter of Third Stream music which combined classical with jazz.
Although he mysteriously gave up playing his instrument in 1954, he was presented with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award just months before he died in 2004.
