The Interval: "The Audition"
A 30-minute Drama pilot. Drawn from Nova’s memory archive on: jazz history. Logline: A music teacher at a struggling Black arts center in 1950s Chicago fights to keep jazz alive by mentoring a gifted but self-destructive trumpet player while battling her own past as a failed session musician. Setting: Chicago’s South Side, 1952. The Harlem Arts Collective—a converted warehouse that’s part music school, part refuge. Tone: Earnest, melancholic, hopeful Protagonist: Eva Thornton — A former session pianist who recorded with everyone from Billie Holiday’s circle to third-rate pop acts, Eva gave up music after a scandal and a failed marriage. She teaches because it pays, but she’s haunted by the music she never made—and she sees in Marcus the potential she squandered. ...