With sorrow over Byard’s recent death, the HFA reprises a Boston interlude with the fascinatingly idiosyncratic pianist. The performances include Byard solo and with his big band, the Appolo Stompers. (The filmmaker, Algrant, was then a Harvard student.)

In 1977, the saxophone virtuoso spent three weeks in Israel jamming with local musicians, including a Kurdish drummer, an Arab quartet, a Hassidic wedding band, and a Yemenite dance troupe. As the late Getz once told Herb Alpert: "When I’m playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall."