My Name is Albert Ayler

"Collin's melancholy, beautiful feature debut does more than just chronicle this undervalued musician; it brings Ayler and his message of spiritual unity back to life." (Aaron Hillis, Village Voice)

"Kasper Collin's film portrays a confident but troubled man, who never doubted that posterity would discover him, and consoled himself that prominent American composer Charles Ives had to work a day job." (Andrew O'Hehir, salon.com)

"A tender and slightly unsettling love letter to iconic avant-garde saxophonist Albert Ayler." (Kerstan Mackness, Time Out)

"You don't have to like or even appreciate Ayler's striking brand of music to be moved by this heartfelt tribute." (Eric Monder, Film Journal International)

“Kaspar Collin’s documentary portrait of the great saxophonist, who died in 1970, evinces a remarkable sympathy with its subject and his art. Born in Cleveland, Ayler first made a name for himself in Stockholm in 1962; Collin, who is Swedish, does terrific legwork to find the musician’s former girlfriend and sidemen, including one who recalls how the unheralded outsider dared to compare his importance to Picasso’s. The ne plus ultra of free jazz, Ayler performed the musical equivalent of speaking in tongues: he left chord changes and swinging rhythms far behind and emitted great spiritual wails and shrieks from his horn. Collin expertly evokes the revolutionary impact of Ayler’s arrival in New York in 1963, when an astonished John Coltrane yielded the bandstand to him. (At Coltrane’s request, Ayler played at his funeral, in 1967, and the film includes an archival recording of that harrowing performance.) The stirring presence and fascinating anecdotes of such bandmates as the drummer Sunny Murray, the judicious, evocative use of archival footage of New York in the mid-sixties, and a generous helping of the music itself combine to offer magical moments of a madeleine-like power, summoning up a vanished world that the music both thrived on and exemplified. Though the end of the film seems rushed—its seventy-nine minutes could have gone on for hours—it is nonetheless a cause for rejoicing. In English and Swedish.” (Richard Brody, New Yorker)

“AN EXTRAORDINARY PORTRAIT OF AN EXTRAORDINARY MUSICIAN." (Sight & Sound)

“One of the most MOVING DOCUMENTARIES EVER MADE ABOUT A JAZZ MUSICIAN." (Jazz Times)

"A SPELLBINDING LOOK AT ONE OF JAZZ' MOST MISUNDERSTOOD GENIUSES." (All About Jazz)