27 | December | 2009

W. Eugene Smith, “Thelonius Monk and His Town Hall Band in Rehearsal”, February 1959.

Underground Story of the “Jazz Loft” is Told in a New Multimedia Exhibition

NEW YORK, NY.- The story of a little known five-story loft building in New York City’s wholesale flower district that was a popular late-night haunt for some of the biggest names in 1950’s and 60’s jazz is told in “The Jazz Loft Project”, a new multimedia exhibition opening February 17, 2010, at

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The exhibition features never-before-displayed vintage black and white prints and rarely heard audio recordings by photographer W. Eugene Smith who spent eight years documenting the jazz musicians, artists, and underground characters who inhabited the scene at 821 Sixth Avenue. Smith’s remarkable photographs evoke the world of smoky jam sessions and after-hours rehearsals with musicians like Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, and Hall Overton.

Curated by Sam Stephenson and Courtney Reid-Eaton of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the exhibition features more than 200 images, several hours of audio, and 16 mm film footage of Eugene Smith working in the loft. “The Jazz Loft Project” will be on display from February 17, 2010, to May 22, 2010, in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. Admission is free.

“The photos and recordings included in “The Jazz Loft Project”, provide remarkable documentation of the creative atmosphere in Eugene Smith’s loft, which has been little-known until Sam Stephenson’s work on The Jazz Loft Project,” said Jacqueline C. Davis, Barbara G. and Lawrence A. Fleischman Executive Director for the Performing Arts. “They also provide a fresh trove of iconography and audio that will provide new insights for scholars and jazz fans. We are very pleased to host this exhibition.”

The Jazz Loft
In 1957, former Life magazine photographer W. Eugene Smith moved out of the home he shared with his wife and four children in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, and into a dilapidated, five-story loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue (between 28th and 29th streets) in New York City’s wholesale flower district. The building was a late-night haunt of musicians, including some of the biggest names in jazzCharles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk among themand countless fascinating, underground characters. Smith found solace in the chaotic, somnambulistic world of the loft and its artists. He turned his documentary impulses away from Pittsburgh where he was working on a documentary project and toward his new surroundings.

From 1957 to 1965, Smith exposed 1,447 rolls of film at his loft, making roughly 40,000 pictures, the largest body of work in his career, photographing the nocturnal jazz scene as well as life on the streets of the flower district, as seen from his fourth-floor window. He wired the building like a surreptitious recording studio and made 1,740 reels (4,000 hours) of stereo and mono audiotapes, capturing more than 300 musicians, among them Roy Haynes, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Roland Kirk, Alice Coltrane, Don Cherry, and Paul Bley. He also recorded such legends as pianists Eddie Costa and Sonny Clark, drummers Ronnie Free and Edgar Bateman, saxophonist Lin Halliday, bassist Henry Grimes, and multi-instrumentalist Eddie Listengart. But guests to the loft included more than just jazz musicians. Norman Mailer, Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, and Salvador Dali all visited during its active years.

The Jazz Loft Project

The Jazz Loft Project is also the subject of a ten-part radio series produced by WNYC and the Center for Documentary Studies. More information and the opportunity to hear episodes from the series are available here.

via artdaily.org