The Paolo Fresu Quintet performs a live rendition of the soundtrack to Louis Malle’s *Elevator to the Gallows*, accompanying a screening of the iconic film noir starring Jeanne Moreau. Striking a balance between fidelity to the original and creative freedom, Paolo Fresu’s quintet reinterprets the famous score that Miles Davis composed in 1957 with a French quartet, renewing the historic dialogue between jazz and cinema and enhancing the nocturnal, suspended atmospheres of a film that has gone down in the history of the seventh art.

A cinematic and musical evening in which the Paolo Fresu Quintet pays tribute to the African-American trumpeter Miles Davis, one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, creating a recital that combines musical precision, narrative skill and improvisational sensitivity. The legendary ensemble reinterprets Davis’s compositions through meticulous preparation, enriching them with new musical elements that amplify the dramatic tension and poetic dimension of the images.
At the heart of the film lies a crime that appears flawless and a Parisian night destined to turn into a labyrinth of misunderstandings, chases and intertwined fates. Whilst the protagonists try in vain to escape the consequences of their actions, the city becomes the setting for a tale suspended between passion, fate and disillusionment.
A muted trumpet, modal and hymnal tones, instrumental dialogues and elegant improvisational passages accompany the cinematic narrative, blending with the images to create an immersive experience that renews the dialogue between live music and cinema and faithfully restores the evocative power of the masterpiece by the then-debutant French director Louis Malle.