By performing songs from movies, television shows and even commercials, Dan Ferris and his “Movie Jazz” sets connect with an audience in a way that goes beyond the music itself. Many of our most deeply embedded memories are songs from movies and television—we remember not only the music, but the images and emotions associated with it.

People are nostalgic—they love the feeling of returning to a bygone era to a place of comfort.

Can “Movie Jazz” really improve a mood, increase social connectivity and provide existential meaning? Dick Clark of American Bandstand fame would have thought so. When he noted, “music is the soundtrack of your life,” he was underscoring how music moves us—how with just a few notes we can be instantly transported to another time, another place, and into another frame of being. We feel safe. We have, if only for a moment, returned home.

In the early 1980s, the founders of MTV figured out that combining the two great pastimes of teenagers—listening to rock music and watching television—would lead to big money. They knew that connecting moving images to music would make the music that much more memorable and intensify emotions.

Jazz was initially fused with moving pictures nearly 100 years ago. Duke Ellington is often credited for being first to that party. But three decades before 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder, there was Jolson’s The Jazz Singer. America’s two greatest contributions to the arts—motion pictures and jazz—got their starts at roughly the same time, and they are now in our DNA.

Dan Ferris and “Movie Jazz” will move an audience, and create a memorable evening for all concerned.