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.

Evan Flory-Barnes conducts his ensemble in the premiere performance of his large chamber composition ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A CELEBRATION at Town Hall in the final presentation of the 2009 Earshot Jazz Festival.

What a great performance by the orchestra moving through a fusion of jazz, hip-hop, and classical music, complete with modern dancers and freestyle break dancers. The Seattle bassist and composer is excited premiering the large chamber work, a snapshot of the abundance of inspiration that can thread artistic mediums together in Seattle. The premiere of Acknowledgement of a Celebration features 35 musicians and ten dancers set to Flory-Barnes’s new compositions.

Flory-Barnes performs with an inclusive passion and expressive intensity, as though he were completely immersed in music. He regularly brings his trio, The Teaching, to the Lucid jazz club in the University District for an open community jam and hang. The Teaching appeared in the 2008 Earshot Jazz Festival at the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center.

I was photographing the group 2nd Century Savage, at the Earshot Jazz concert series: Jazz: The Second Century at the Good Shepherd Center in Wallingford last Thursday, and it turned out not to be as hot as it was on Weds. There was a cool breeze drafting in the windows as the Good Shepherd Center sits on top of a hill and the space is on the 4th floor with a view of the sun setting over the Olympics. I was taken by the backlighting on this tree and focused on it rather than the sunset.

2nd Century Savage is saxophonist, flutist, and composer John C. Savage with electronica artist, vusac (aka Isaac Peachin). Their mission, they say, is to expand the definition of jazz to include electronic instruments and live production techniques in tandem with contemporary jazz improvisation. The results are haunting, transporting, and strikingly novel. Their performances give the impression of swirling planes of sound, some melodic and familiar, some protean and mysterious, folding through untold dimensions of space and the mind.

Photograph by Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan specializing in photojournalism, portraits for publications and corporations, and photojournalistic Seattle wedding photography.

Phil Kelly has been working on a new CD project,out at Bear Creek Studio in Woodinville recently, his first big band jazz album under his own name, “Convergence Zone” which is scheduled for fall release on Origin Records. I got to make a panoramic photo of the whole band on a break out behind the studio. Phil is seated at right.
In addition to more than 40 years as a composer / arranger for film, TV, and other media applications, Phil Kelly has written for bands like Bill Watrous’ NY Wildlife Refuge, the Old Tonight show band , Doc Severinsen, Si Zentner, as well as functioning as arranger/ conductor / drummer for vocalists Buddy Greco, Julius LaRosa, Frank D’Rone, Sylvia Syms, John Gary, Jenny Smith, and Al ‘TNT’ Braggs among others..

Early on in his career, he also logged several years as a jazz drummer with artists such as Terry Gibbs ,Red Garland, and Denny Zeitlin as well as years of work as a studio and recording drummer. In addition to his film and TV writing, He has written music for over 500 national commercials , ESPN, ABC Sports , NFL Films, and industrial films and shows for Cadillac, Chevrolet, Volkswagen, American Airlines and Zales Jewelers.

His website is at http://www.philkellymusic.com/

I photographed  Dianne Reeves and Kurt Elling last night at the Belllevue Jazz Festival. What a treat.  Two of the top jazz vocalists around today. Dianne Reeves performed last night in the Meydenbauer Center with her Strings Attached ensemble featuring guitarists Russell Malone and Romero Lubambo. They were fantastic. I last photographer Russell at the Triple Door back in March playing a duet with Bill Frisell.

Kurt Elling performed with Laurence Hobgood on piano, Rob Amster on bass, and Ulysses Owens Jr on drums. The trio created a great sound backing Kurt in a marvelous performance. He was so cool and suave.

I photographed Wayne Horvitz during a sound check before his performance at the 2006 Earshot Jazz Festival at the Triple Door. He was laying with the Gravitas Quartet. A beautiful group. What I really like about this photograph is the backlight making almost a complete silhouette. It is really nice to have access to different angles during a soundcheck instead of shooting from the audience. I am going to add this to my editorial website splash page. I like the feeling of it. Maybe it is too quiet?

Photograph by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan, a photojournalist specializing in photojournalism and portrait photography for publications and corporations and a Seattle wedding photographer with an unobtrusive, story-telling approach creating award winning Seattle wedding photography and wedding photojournalism ranked among the best Seattle wedding photographers.