Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan

Brian Heaney has a new group, Ask The Ages, that he wanted me to photograph so we made a series of informal individual and group portraits outside his house where the jazz group were rehearsing the other day for an upcoming concert on  Thursday, July 15, 2010 7:00pm – 8:30pm, at Egan’s Ballard Jam House, 1707 Northwest Market Street Seattle, WA 98107 Pioctured above left to right are:

John Seman, bass, Greg Campbell, drums, Brian Heaney, guitar and Matt Reid, trumpet.

Portrait Photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan creating portraits for publications and a Seattle Wedding Photographer with an artistic photojournalist style.

Bill Charlap and Renee Rosnes were wonderful. This was my first time to photograph a piano jazz duo, and it was delightful.
“Husband and wife, Bill Charlap & Renee Rosnes, team up for select performances of impassioned, eclectic, and extraordinary piano duets.
Renee Rosnes is one of the premier jazz pianists and composers of her generation. Having toured and recorded with many of the world’s greatest musicians, her resume reads like a who’s who of jazz. As a leader, Ms. Rosnes has released a series of nine inspired recordings on the Blue Note label, which have collectively garnered four Juno awards, the Canadian equivalent of a GRAMMY. She is also a founding member of the all-star band, the SFJAZZ Collective.
For more than a decade, pianist Bill Charlap has been forging a solo career characterized by swing, eloquence and a romantic musical sensibility. Twice GRAMMY nominated, he has released five superb albums for Blue Note records – CDs celebrating the American Songbook tradition, with songs of Hoagy Carmichael, Leonard Bernstein, and George Gershwin and others – that have afforded him an increased visibility as one of jazz’s foremost pianists.”

This was the final performance of the 4 day Bellevue Jazz Festival. I have photographed a lot more of the concerts and will post photographs from them over the next week or two.

I really enjoyed so many of these performances and was happy to have been photographing this festival and happy with many of the pictures I was able to make thanks to the Bellevue Jazz Festival. Hope you enjoyed the festival.

Jazz Photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, who photographs jazz performances, and creates portrait photography for publications and Seattle Wedding Photographywith an artistic photojournalist style.

Terence Blanchard put in a wonderful set Saturday night backed by a group of young and up and coming artists.

Sunday June 6th is the final day of the Festival. For tickets and more information go to the Festival website; Bellevue Jazz Festival

A world renowned trumpeter, composer, band leader and Blue Note recording artist, Terence Blanchard is the most prolific jazz musician to ever compose for motion pictures. Blanchard was born and raised in New Orleans where he studied with the Marsalis brothers at the famed New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts in 1980. Blanchard originally began performing on Spike Lee’s soundtracks, including “Mo Better Blues” in which he ghosted the trumpet for Denzel Washington.

Blanchard has established himself as one of the most influential jazz musicians and film score masters of his generation, a member of a jazz legacy that has shaped the contours of modern jazz today. With more than 29 albums to his credit, as a musician Blanchard is a multi-GRAMMY Award winner and nominee, winning in 2008 for his instrumental solo for “Be-Bop” on Live At The 2007 Monterey Jazz Festival. In addition to receiving the award, Blanchard performed live on the telecast along with other New Orleans artists including Lil’ Wayne, Allen Toussaint and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, who were all joined on-stage by singer Robin Thicke. Also in 2008, Blanchard won a GRAMMY for his CD, A Tale of God’s Will (A Requiem for Katrina), a beautifully haunting and impassioned song cycle about Hurricane Katrina and the ravages incurred upon the City of New Orleans and its residents.

As a film composer, Blanchard has more than 50 scores to his credit and received a Golden Globe nomination for Spike Lee’s “25th Hour.” In 2008 he completed the score for Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna,” as well as the soundtrack for Darnell Martin’s “Cadillac Records.” Other film music written by Blanchard includes Kasi Lemmons’ “Eve’s Bayou” and “Talk to Me,” Oprah Winfrey’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Tim Story’s “Barbershop” and Ron Shelton’s “Dark Blue.” He is currently working on the score for George Lucas’ “Red Tails” and has already completed musical contributions for the score on Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog,” set for release this fall.

As Artistic Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, which he was instrumental in relocating from Los Angeles to New Orleans, Blanchard works with students in the areas of artistic development, arranging, composition and concert programming. He also participates in master classes around the world as well as local community outreach activities in his beloved hometown of New Orleans.

Jazz Photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, who photographs jazz performances, and creates portrait photography for publications and Seattle Wedding Photographywith an artistic photojournalist style.

The Bad Plus drummer David King was all over his drum kit Friday night at Theatre at Meydenbauer Center as the Bellevue Jazz Festival continues. What a great show they put on. David King was outstanding as was bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson.

For tickets and more information go to the Festival website; Bellevue Jazz Festival

Forget categories and catch phrases. The sound of The Bad Plus is distinctive, eclectic and formidable. The Bad Plus have exploded all notions of what a jazz piano trio should sound like, whether at outdoor rock festivals, jazz clubs or symphony halls.

The Bad Plus is a collective made up of bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King. All three are from the Midwest and they have known each other since their teens. Nonetheless, with the exception of one unimpressive meeting in 1990, it is only after spending their formative 20s apart — King as member of the seminal indie jazz group Happy Apple, Iverson as the musical director for the Mark Morris Dance Group, Anderson as a prominent up-and-coming player on the New York jazz scene — that they reunited in late 2000 to play a weekend club date in Minneapolis. The chemistry was immediate and obvious. They planned a second gig and a one-day recording session for the indie jazz label Fresh Sound and The Bad Plus was born.

The Los Angeles Times ranked the trio among the leaders of what might be called the Nu Jazz movement. Newsweek declared their 2005 release Suspicious Activity? to be “among the freshest sounding albums of the year”. And according to Rolling Stone, “by any standard, jazz or otherwise, this is mighty, moving music, hot players with hard-rock hearts”. In short, a diverse array of music lovers has been seduced by The Bad Plus and their earnest, dizzying musicianship.

The Los Angeles Times ranked the trio among the leaders of what might be called the Nu Jazz movement. Newsweek declared their 2005 release Suspicious Activity? to be “among the freshest sounding albums of the year”. And according to Rolling Stone, “by any standard, jazz or otherwise, this is mighty, moving music, hot players with hard-rock hearts”. In short, a diverse array of music lovers has been seduced by The Bad Plus and their earnest, dizzying musicianship. Jazz Photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, who photographs jazz performances, and creates portrait photography for publications and Seattle Wedding Photography with an artistic photojournalist style. See more work from this Seattle Photographer.

Once again the Bellevue Jazz Festival is here and Kicking it off at the Meydenbauer Theater was The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra (SRJO), the Northwest’s premier big band jazz ensemble. Founded in 1995, the 17-piece big band is made up of the most prominent jazz soloists and band leaders in the greater Seattle area. SRJO played a concert of highlights from their 2009-2010 concert season, including hits from their November 2009 “Tribute to Ray Charles” concert (“One Mint Julep,” “Moanin”), their March 2010 “Big Band Monk and Mingus” concert (“Haitian Fight Song” by Mingus, “Misterioso” by Monk), their April 2010 “Birth of the Cool” concert (Boplicity, Rocker), and a new Michael Brockman composition for the SRJO titled “Passage Noir.” Featured soloists included trumpeter Jay Thomas, baritone saxophonist Bill Ramsay, pianist Randy Halberstadt, tenor saxophonist Hadely Caliman and Travis Ranney, trombonists Dan Marcus and David Marriott, plus alto saxophonists Mark Taylor and Michael Brockman. Here are some highlights from the concert.

For tickets and more information go to the Festival website; Bellevue Jazz Festival

Jazz Photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, who photographs jazz performances, and creates portrait photography for publications and Seattle Wedding Photography with an artistic photojournalist style. See more work from this Seattle Photographer.

While backing up some folders I came across this picture of Jessica Lurie. I photographed Jessica Lurie in an alley in Pioneer Square here in Seattle, a few years ago just before she packed up and moved to Brooklyn, New York. I had previously photographed her with her group Living Daylights and I have been following her since then. She seems to be playing everywhere from Europe to back here on occasion.

Her next gig looks like it will be Sat May 15 8:00 PM I wish I could be in NY for this one.
Kolot Chayeinu in Brooklyn, NY – * MARC RIBOT * JESSICA LURIE * MARTY EHRLICH * ROY NATHANSON * GREG COHEN PRACTICING A concert and conversation moderated by Professor Tamar Barzel Five world-class musicians.

Composer/improvisers with wide interests and adventuresome ideas. Where do their creative selves and their Jewish selves meet? Do they meet at all? On Saturday, May 15 at 8 pm, Marc, Jessica, Marty, Roy, and Greg will join Professor Barzel for an evening of words and music in which they’ll explore the (possible) role of things Jewish in their own not-obviously-Jewish creative work. Solos, duos, trios, quartets. The evening is open to possibility. Come, listen in on the conversation, consider these questions with us, and enjoy a performance of original music and creative improvisation by these sensational artists.

Guitarist Marc Ribot has “a stunningly original guitar style that channels the primal power of blues, jazz and early rock while exploding the conventions of each style” (Guitar Player). “A little rock, a little bebop, a little free improvisation, and a good dose of Eastern European melody and harmony: these are the sources for saxophonist Jessica Lurie’s unique creative voice” (Le Monde). Clarinetist Marty Ehrlich is “one of his time’s most original thinkers [with] a rare and wonderful talent” (The Nation). “In a world of useless shouting things,” saxophonist/composer Roy Nathanson’s project Sotto Voce “is sane, funny, beautiful and intimate” (Elvis Costello). “Contemporary jazz does not get any better than this” (Birmingham Post) if it involves bassist Greg Cohen, who has performed and recorded in innumerable styles with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Marianne Faithfull, John Zorn, Dave Douglas, Laurie Anderson, Ornette Coleman, and the Rolling Stones. Tamar Barzel is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Wellesley College whose research is situated at the intersection between New York City’s downtown music scene and Jewish cultural studies.

Jazz Photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan covering jazz performances, creating portrait photography for publications and a Seattle Wedding Photographer with an artistic photojournalist style.

Gebhard Ullman Clarinet Trio
Last week I was assigned to photograph the Gebhard Ullman Clarinet Trio.  I was not sure what to expect from a trio of clarinets coming out of Berlin, but I was taken aback by the talents of Gebhard Ullman, Juergen Kupke and Michael Thieke and their music from their opening number as they slowly strolled through the house to the stage, to the finale. An amazing amount of variety from such a tight ensemble of reed players. Their music was swinging and sophisticated and somewhere out there to the mysterious, abstract yet strangely accessible.

From the Earshot Jazz Magazine program notes “Ullmann is a follow-up guy in a world of intermittency. We hear sounds in snippets, music in simple, single song structures, see acts come and go with astonishing speed. Yes, improvisers come up with different ideas constantly, never uttering the same exact thing twice, but the extended suite on Ullmann’s new Ballads and Related Objects comes back again and again to a series of firefly-like blinks, woody auras with sonic embers around the core combustion, as on “Variations on a Theme by Claude Debussy.” But the blinks go to yelps and clarinet shouts, barking that front-ends a chatter of clarinet/alto clarinet/bass clarinet, a recurring intensity.

Ullmann sees his follow-ups more concretely, too: “However I may seem to go in different directions at the same time, I follow up most of the formats for many years. Mostly more than a decade.” He’s right, too, bringing bands back time and again to explore the platform, to survey how the ensemble has grown as individuals. Ballads is the third session from Ullmann, Jurgen Kupke (clarinet), and Michael Thieke (alto clarinet), and as it’s released, Ullmann is also putting out another date with trombone madman, Steve Swell. The simply named Ullmann/Swell 4 spills out News? No News!, a rambunctious blurt of energetic action that records no distance or creative tension between Ullmann, a Berlin transplant who spends most of his time in Europe, and the New Yorker. One could imagine the difference in scenes, Europe more friendly to the avant-garde, North America more occupied by its love for the mainstream, its measuring of art by the yardstick of commerce. But Ullmann resists the characterization: “We are all trying to move forward musically and be able to survive. There is no difference,” he replies when questioned on how we differ on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

As for the Clarinet Trio, Ullmann infuses the music with what qualities he sees in Thieke and Kupke: “They bring in contemporary music, performance, jokes.” He’s emphatic about their musical potency, too: “You never heard a trio like this. It is at times more than a trio almost an orchestra. It is all of my woodwind music.” Like ROVA and the WSQ before them, the Trio does indeed encompass Ullmann’s many interests, his core. “Be it bands like Henry Cow or Can, be it the classical music I grew up with or the contemporary composed music I listened to as a teenager, composers like Lutoslawski, Henze or Stockhausen,” he comments, the woodwind elements didn’t exist. And even as some of Ullmann’s impetus was to “transpose to wind instruments” what he heard in music that did not feature them, he also knows that “minimalistic techniques and techniques using overtones, multiphonics and such [can] give the impression of more than 3 players,” enabling the ensemble to move beyond some of the limitations of the source material. Continue reading here. Jazz Photographer and Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan covers jazz performances, creates portrait photography for publications and corporations and is a Seattle Wedding Photographer, wedding photography with an artistic photojournalist style.

The Charles Lloyd New Quartet with Jason Moran, Reuben Rogers, & Eric Harland playing at Town Hall.

All Photographs on this website Daniel Sheehan © 2009. All Rights Reserved. Please inquire for permission before using.

It was a beautiful new group Charles Lloyd brought to town earlier this month. I have been meaning to post some photos from this performance and here they are. If you missed the show it was a wonderful performance. Charles is one of my all time favorite musicians. And so is Jason Moran. I was happy to get the chance to hear Eric Harland and Reuben Rogers play as well.

These cats were very intense and yet the music was very spiritual.

“Since the 1960s, tenor saxophonist and flautist Charles Lloyd’s life has alternated between periods of musical and personal exploration. After spending a decade or so working as a sideman in different blues and jazz groups, Lloyd hit a goldmine of critical acclaim and popular support in with his quartet’s groundbreaking performance at the 1966 Monterey Jazz Festival (no small feat in a period when jazz’s audiences were largely moving in new directions). This particular group was notable not just for Lloyd’s debut as a fresh and exciting leader, but also because two of its members, Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette, were themselves only a few years away from exploding as widely innovative and influential jazz musicians….

Lloyd’s New Quartet is fortified with relatively young but well-established jazz musicians who are fully capable of sharing Lloyd’s pursuits. A leader in his own right, Jason Moran (piano) brings the group a unique, mature second lead voice. He’s one of those pianists who sometimes convince you that you’re listening to 80 years of jazz piano history rolled into one set of fingers. His heavy left hand will dabble in vintage 1920s stride playing right before flowing through a sequence that breaks into advanced Andrew Hill territory, while his frank, direct solos often develop in unpredictable turns that take full advantage his repertoire’s diverse influences.

On stage, when Lloyd himself isn’t soloing, he doesn’t just stand there; he frequently can’t resist dancing to the pulsing, breathing rhythms provided by his fellow musicians. Reuben Rogers (bass) and Eric Harland (drums/percussion) form a reliable, gregarious backbone that’s perfect for bringing the exotic structures in Lloyd’s compositions to life. Whether the tune is funky, swinging, Latin, or has no definable rhythm at all, the team decorates it with outbursts that always feel natural and appropriate….” – Nathan Bluford from the Earshot Jazz program guide. Jazz Photography by editorial photographer and photojournalist Daniel Sheehan who covers jazz performances, and creates portrait photography for publications and corporations. He is also a Seattle Wedding Photographer at A Beautiful Day Photography, a wedding photographer with an artistic photojournalist style.

This is Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan’s photo of Larry Ochs that the Guardian (UK) used without permission and without a photo credit on their website with an article headlined “Spanish fan calls police over saxophone band who were just not jazzy enough” All Photographs on this website Daniel Sheehan © 2009. All Rights Reserved. Please inquire for permission before using.

After discovering their unauthorized use a day or so afterwards I wrote to their music editor at music.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk but he has not yet seen fit to respond. I am now pondering what my next move will be. UPDATE: I have received word from the Guardian that they are sorry they used the photo without permission and offered payment and then some for for their use.

Click on jazz photography to see the original blog post on my jazz photography website eyeshotjazz where the photo was first posted last year.

Here is their story:

“Jazzman Larry Ochs has seen many things during 40 years playing his saxophone around the world but, until this week, nobody had ever called the police on him. That changed on Monday night however, when’s Spain’s pistol-carrying Civil Guard police force descended on the Sigüenza Jazz festival to investigate allegations that Ochs’s music was not, well, jazz.

Police decided to investigate after an angry jazz buff complained that the Larry Ochs Sax and Drumming Core group was on the wrong side of a line dividing jazz from contemporary music. The jazz purist claimed his doctor had warned it was “psychologically inadvisable” for him to listen to anything that could be mistaken for mere contemporary music.

According to a report in El País newspaper yesterday, the khaki-clad police officers listened to the saxophone-playing and drumming coming from the festival stage before agreeing that the purist might, indeed, have a case. His complaint against the organisers, who refused to return his money, was duly registered and will be passed on to a judge.

“The gentleman said this was not jazz and that he wanted his money back,” said the festival director, Ricardo Checa. ”He didn’t get his money. After all, he knew exactly what group he was going to see, as their names were on the festival programme. He added: “The question of what constitutes jazz and what does not is obviously a subjective one, but not everything is New Orleans funeral music.”

“Larry Ochs plays contemporary, creative jazz. He is a fine musician and very well-renowned.” ”I thought I had seen it all,” Ochs, who reportedly suffered a momentary identity crisis, told El País. “I was obviously mistaken.” ”After this I will at least have a story to tell my grandchildren,” the California-based saxophonist added.”

Jazz Photography by editorial photographer and photojournalist Daniel Sheehan who covers jazz performances, and creates portrait photography for publications and corporations. He is also a Seattle Wedding Photographer at A Beautiful Day Photography, a wedding photographer with an artistic photojournalist style.