September 3, 1999

Innocence Lost: American Movies Revisit Jazz

By KRIN GABBARD

Jazz's profile has been heightened in recent years, its status elevated. It's not only heard regularly in clubs and at festivals, but also presented as high art on the stages of Lincoln Center in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington, and other respectable venues. The trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis even won a 1997 Pulitzer Prize for his weighty jazz oratorio, "Blood on the Fields." And jazz is used routinely in television and radio commercials to signify