Review: 'Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense' (VIDEO)

For something so free and intangible, jazz can evoke a fairly fixed sonic image for many: Dapper men in suits and ties skittering away in an improvisational haze, sending bopping horns over slinky, walking basslines and busy bursts of brush-stroked drumming.

Yet that broad snapshot of an entire genre, loosely anchored in its classic 1940s and '50s period, is just part of what jazz is -- or, in many ways, was. Filmmakers Michael Rivoira, Lars Larson and Peter J. Vogt made it their mission to expand that very idea of jazz -- and take the pulse of the artform in the '00s -- with their 2009 documentary "Icons Among Us: Jazz in the Present Tense," which screens today at the Boulder International Film Festival.

Their 90-minute examination -- based on more than 70 interviews filmed over seven years -- is eye- and ear-opening, broadening the idea of what jazz has become in the 21st century by spotlighting artists as diverse as original "young lion" Wynton Marsalis and soulful singer/bassist Esperanza Spalding to more jam-oriented groups such as the Benevento/Russo Duo and Medeski Martin and Wood.

In the film, trumpeter Terence Blanchard calls the current era "the quietest revolution in jazz I've ever heard in my life."

Crucially, "Icons Among Us" isn't all talk; the players and bands featured aren't just interviewed, but shown in their element, with long instrumental passages -- such as a mesmerizing, trance-like piece by guitarist Bill Frisell -- weaving in and out of the film's narrative.

"Icons Among Us," in the end, doesn't really define what jazz is or isn't, but, rather, dabbles in the myriad possibilities of a musical form that -- contrary to popular opinion -- isn't stuck in time. As trumpeter Nicholas Payton says in the film's opening, "The truth never remains the same. And to me, a lie is anything that has nothing to do with now. The truth is now."