Jazz Loft Project

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The Jazz Loft Project documents the long-term work of the photographer W. Eugene Smith , who captured the American jazz scene in a New York loft between 1957 and 1965 in images and sound.

The Jazz Loft Project

Between 1957 and 1965, the American photographer W. Eugene Smith lived in a New York loft on Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) that became known as the Jazz Loft . As there were only a few rehearsal rooms in the city that did not charge hourly rent, the 821 Sixth Avenue building soon became one of the most important meeting places in the jazz world. Smith called the place in which he set up a room with plasterboard walls “a very special piece of America”. He then installed microphones in many rooms and corridors in the building and recorded around 4,000 hours on 1,740 tapes; In and around the building there were also around 40,000 photographs of Smith, on which many musicians from the jazz scene of the time were captured. After Smith's death in 1978, the tapes were housed in the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona , where they were first discovered in 1998 and then evaluated in a twelve-year archive by Sam Stephenson, lecturer in documentary studies at Duke University Exhibition and published in 2009 in the book The Jazz Loft Project .

The Jazz Loft Project was organized by the Center for Documentary Studies in cooperation with CCP and the heirs of W. Eugene Smith; it was used to prepare and catalog Smith's tapes, to research the tapes and photographs, and to obtain interviews with those who were still living in the sessions, such as Bill Crow . The traditional recordings offer a musical and cultural documentation of the New York jazz scene of the time with astonishingly good sound quality. Smith noted 139 names of jazz musicians on the ribbon covers; Among them were well-known artists such as Thelonious Monk , Zoot Sims , Roland Kirk , Bill Evans , Chick Corea , Roy Haynes and Lee Konitz , as well as Ronnie Free, Henry Grimes , Edgar Bateman , Eddie Listengart and Lin Halliday as well as many unknown musicians. The research revealed the number of 300 different artists on the tapes. Thelonious Monk has been documented working with Hall Overton , including rehearsals with a big band for Monk's Town Hall concerts at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in 1959, 1963 and 1964.

The surviving tapes also contain some curiosities by W. Eugene Smith; He also recorded the street noise in the so-called Flower District , nightly radio talk shows, telephone calls, television and radio news as well as many dialogues between the musicians, artists, friends of Smith and others involved. A dialogue between Monk and his arranger Hall Overton during their rehearsals is recorded:

Monk: Nobody should play from sight here. Take a bar and then let them work.
Overton: This is going to be tough, man.
Monk: It's always good to tell guys that. then they'll manage it

In addition to the many photographs of the loft jazz sessions, Smith captured thousands of street scenes from his fourth-floor window. In this way, a unique portrait of this place and this era emerged from Smith's tapes, the photographs and the oral traditions of those involved in the sense of an oral history . In the summer of 2007, more than 250 participants in the loft sessions were interviewed. The project reached its peak in 2009 with the publication of a book, a radio series in cooperation with the station “ WNYC Radio” in New York and a traveling exhibition in 2010.

Appreciation

Sam Stephenson described Smith's work as “the most ambitious research project on modern jazz that has ever been undertaken”, (...) “Recordings and tapes now give us an idea of ​​a subculture, of the world apart from the stages and clubs, the nighttime Lives of musicians and artists who have remained closed to us until now. Quite authentic , because most of the musicians didn't know they were being recorded. "

literature

Sam Stephenson: The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965 . Knopf, NYC 2009. 288 pp. ISBN 978-0-307-26709-2

documentary

The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith (Sara Fishko producer, director) USA 2016

swell

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Quoted from A. Kreye, Süddeutsche Zeitung 2010.
  2. ↑ http://www.jazzloftproject.org/?s=book
  3. ↑ http://www.wnyc.org/jazzloftthemovie/
  4. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/movies/the-jazz-loft-according-to-w-eugene-smith-review.html?_r=0