Upcoming Events

Thursday, September 9, 2010.  8pm.  Sam Stephenson to give JLP presentation at Hot Shoe Creative studio in Winston-Salem, N.C.  Sponsored by the Piedmont Jazz Alliance and WSNC radio.

September 17-19, 2010. Jazz Loft Project audio-visual exhibit with projected images.  Monterey Jazz Festival. Monterey, CA. 

Sunday, September 19, 2010.  4pm.  Sam Stephenson to give a JLP presentation.  Monterey Jazz Festival.

October 20, 2010.  6pm.  Archivists Roundtable of Metropolitan New York, Inc. awards reception.  Columbia University.  NYC. 

TBA, Fall, 2010.  Rescheduled JLP event in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, CHAOS MANOR.  See below.  Check back for new details.

February 3, 2011.  JLP exhibition opens at the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University.  To be on display through July 10, 2011.

Past Events:

Thursday, August 26, 2010. Noon. Jazz Loft Project Exhibtion gallery talk by Sam Stephenson.  Chicago Cultural Center.

Friday, July 23, 2010. 6-8pm. Opening reception for the Jazz Loft Project Exhibition.  Chicago Cultural Center.

Saturday-Sunday, July 17-18, 2010. New Mexico Jazz Festival hosted by Tom Guralnick. Sam Stephenson will give a multi-media JLP presentation at 8pm on Saturday night July 17 at the Outpost Performance Space in Albuquerque. On Sunday July 18 at 3pm Sam will give a presentation at the Verve Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe.

Saturday, July 17, 2010. Jazz Loft Project exhibition opens to the public at the Chicago Cultural Center.  Press release issued July 6 HERE.

Wednesday, July 7, 7pm.  Postponed until September 2010 due to NYC record-setting heat wave.  Check back for a new date. A Jazz Loft Project event outdoors at Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, N.Y., part of New York City's summer Park Lit project, sponsored by the Brooklyn-based literary journal A Public Space, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke, and Greenlight Bookstore of Brooklyn.  Sam Stephenson will give a presentation and a jazz combo will perform.

Friday, June 11. 7 PM. Jazz Loft veteran and drummer Ronnie Free performs with the Charleston All Stars. Featuring a talk by Jazz Loft Research Associate Dan Partridge. Jazz Loft Project books signed by Sam Stephenson will be available from Blue Bicycle Books. Jam session to follow. Upstairs at McCrady’s Restaurant. 2 Unity Alley. Tickets and information.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010.  7pm.  In Eugene Smith's hometown Sam Stephenson will give a talk entitled "Picture Paradise:  The Vison and Work of W. Eugene Smith."  Ulrich Museum of Art.  Wichita State University.  Wichita, KS.

Friday, May 21, 2010.  Jazz Loft Project Research Associate and primary tape archivist Dan Partridge will appear with engineer Chris Lacinak of AV Preserve at the annual conference of the Association of Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) in New Orleans.  Chris performed the first preservation transfers of Smith's tapes.  He and Dan will discuss various aspects of preserving, indexing, and cataloging Eugene Smith's tape collection.

Monday, April 19, 2010.  5:30pm, doors open at 5:00pm.  Film screening of In My Mind, by filmmaker Gary Hawkins of the Center for Documentary Studies, based on a concert performance of the same title by Jason Moran's Big Bandwagon on February 26, 2009 at Town Hall, a fiftieth anniversary homage to Thelonious Monk's original 1959 Town Hall concert.  Hawkins and Moran will do Q&A after the screening.  New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

POSTPONED (New Date is July 7, 2010 in Fort Greene Park - see above): Tuesday, April 20, 2010.  7pm.  Jazz Loft Project book event.  Sam Stephenson will give a multi-media presentation, "The Making of the Jazz Loft Project."  BookCourt.  163 Court St. Brooklyn, N.Y.  Event co-sponsored by A Public Space. 

Wednesday, April 14, 2010.  6pm.  Hall Overton: Out of the Shadows. Musician Steve Reich, who studied with Hall Overton in the loft once a week for two years in the late 1950s, will appear with musician Ethan Iverson of the seminal jazz trio, the Bad Plus, and Sam Stephenson, to discuss the music and influence of Overton.  Composer and former Overton student Carman Moore will also speak, as will current Juilliard professor and musician Joel Sachs.  New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. CLICK HERE TO SEE WEB VIDEO OF THIS EVENT.

Thursday, February 25, 2010.  7pm.  Sam Stephenson will give a Jazz Loft presentation at the historic Turnage Theater in his hometown Washington, N.C.

Thursday, February 18, 2010.  Sam and Dan attended a meeting of the New York Chapter of the Association of Recorded Sound Collections and presented material along with the original Jazz Loft Project preservation engineer, Chris Lacinak of AV Preserve.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010.  Sam Stephenson, Courtney Reid-Eaton, and Dan Partridge participated in an event with 37 people associated with the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund at the Jazz Loft Project exhibition.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010.  Jazz Loft Project Exhibition Opens to the public.  New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010.  Roughly 600 people attended the exhibition opening at NYPLPA.

Thursday, February 4, 2010.  Noon.  Sam Stephenson gave a presentation to fifty people at Pixar Studios, Emeryville, CA.

Friday, February 5, 2010.  7pm.  SFJazz.  War Memorial, Green Room.  San Francisco, CA.  Sam Stephenson gave a multi-media Jazz Loft presentation to 270-300 people.

Saturday, February 6, 2010.  3pm.  Bird & Beckett Books.  San Francisco, CA.  Sam Stephenson appeared with musicians and Jazz Loft alums pianist Si Perkoff and saxophonist Pete Yellin.
 

January 11, 2010 PRESS RELEASE

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.” 

Jazz Loft Project Radio Series Airs Nationally

Highlights from WNYC’s Jazz Loft Radio series air on NPR’s Weekend Edition every Sunday in December. more

Book and Website Launch Party
Thursday, December 3, 2009, 6-10pm
West End Wine Bar
601 Main Street, Durham, North Carolina

Join us in Durham to celebrate the publication of The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957–1965 book and the launch of www.jazzloftproject.org with live music led by legendary loft drummer, Ronnie Free, with special guests. 

Author Sam Stephenson will give a talk and sign copies of the book, followed by live music by the Ronnie Free Trio. (Free is a former loft resident.)

The event, which is free and open to the public, is sponsored by the Center for Documentary Studies, the Regulator Bookshop, West End Wine Bar, and The Splinter Group.