John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Funky Friday: Roy DeCarava on Photographing Jazz

I'm doing something a little different for today's Funky Friday -- words and pictures, rather than music.

The other day, I stumbled across an wonderful 1990 interview that Ivor Miller conducted with the great Roy DeCarava, who was know for his photographs of jazz musicians (among many other things).  What he had to say was fascinating, even poetic.  Below are a few excerpts and pages from his book, The Sound I Saw.

DECARAVA:  I worked with Coltrane and Dolphy the same way I work with everything.  I respect what I'm looking at.  I do not intrude.  I stay back, and I wait until something happens.  And then I take my picture, and then I wait again.  I do not get up in front of people and poke my camera in their faces.  I sit back and keep as quiet and invisible as I can, and I wait.  Because I know something is going to happen.  I know that it's beautiful.  It's just a question of my timing and my ability to be open enough to see what is there.  I do this with everything.  I don't brush the lint off.  I don't move around for a better view.

 

From:  Roy DeCarava, The Sound I Saw.

MILLER:  How does this connect with your concept of "sound visualization" in photography?

DECARAVA:  I respect the people and the music.  I listen to it.  I photograph musicians as people, not as musicians.  I don't feel it's necessary to photograph them while playing.  What I respond to is their commitment o what they do.  The intensity that they bring to life at that moment.  ...It is one of the most wonderful things to experience; when people become so focused on a particular task that they become one with something other than themselves.  It is this identification with something beyond the self that to me is one of the positive things about being human.  The musician expresses this in one of the most visual ways.  It's almost a shame to take a picture because it is so easy!  There is so much intensity and involvement that it is hard not to photograph it well.

From:  Roy DeCarava, The Sound I Saw.

MILLER:  So a theme in your work is "listening."

DECARAVA:  Absolutely.  Seeing in the same way that one listens.  To listen means to concentrate and focus on something that you are listening to.  Seeing is the same thing.

[Excerrpted from:  Ivor Miller, "If It Hasn't Been One of Color":  An Interview With Roy DeCarava, Callaloo, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 847-857.]

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You can see a gallery of DeCarava's photographs, here.  A couple of weeks ago, I included a video about him in a blog post.  You can see it, here.

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Funky Friday: Brandee Younger & Afro-Harping -- A Winter JazzFest Preview

I've been looking forward to this for a very long time:

Tonight! Brandee Younger presents Afro-Harping: A Tribute to (the great) Dorothy Ashby, as part of Winter JazzFest 2013.

Location: Sullivan Hall, 214 Sullivan St., between Bleecker and West 3rd, in New York City. Time: 10:15pm. I'll be there. You should be, too. This cool video explains it all.

 

 

Winter JazzFest 2013 Preview: Afro-Harping (Brandee Younger).

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Merry Christmas! From Bird, Ella, Miles, Pops, Duke, & Me

Merry Christmas, everyone!  Enjoy the tunes, they're wonderful.  And in Miles' case, brilliantly strange.

 

 

Charlie "Bird" Parker, "White Christmas."

 

 

Ella Fitzgerald, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

 

Miles Davis (w/Marcus Miller and Dave Sanborn), "We Three Kings."

 

Louis "Pops" Armstrong, "Christmas Night in Harlem."

 

Duke Ellington Meets Tchaikovsky, "The Nutcracker Suite."

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A word of thanks to Ted Gioia, whose tweets (@tedgioia) tipped me off to the videos by Pops Armstrong, Miles, and Bird.

A Christmas Eve Lagniappe: The Kait Dunton Trio

This doesn't need much of an introduction from me.  It's 8 minutes and 32 seconds of bliss from the Kait Dunton Trio.

 

Kait Dunton Trio, "The Way You Look Tonight," by Jerome Kern & Dorothy Fields.

Kait Dunton, piano; Cooper Appelt, bass; Jake Reed, drums.

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Kait is a fabulous pianist, as you can tell.  She might be an even better composer.  I reviewed Mountain Suite, her latest CD, here.  I included several videos in the review, so you can check her out for yourself.

Funky Friday with Barbara Bruckmueller: Big Band Album of the Year, 2013

And the Big Band Album of the Year for 2013 is...  The debut recording of the Barbara Bruckmueller Big Band.  Yes, 2013, and I'm only half joking.

I've been a fan of Barbara and her band for a couple of years.  I love her sensibility as a composer.  She's deeply embedded in the jazz tradition, but is by no means bound by it.  Her compositions happily embrace other influences; the sounds that she creates are fresh, gorgeous, soulful.  Not surprisingly, her band attracts fantastic musicians.

 

Barbara Bruckmueller Big Band, Vienna, Austria, August 2012.

In the video above, Barbara talks about her band's new album, which will be released in March 2013.  I'm betting right now that it will be my favorite big band recording of the year.

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I've written about Barbara twice before.  You can read those posts here and here and listen to a couple of terrific arrangements -- one is an original tune, the other is by Duke Ellington.  Fine and funky playing, straight from Vienna, Austria.