´It dawned on me in New York that jazz was a national gaiety ... You take your seat within a smoke filled room, surrounded by sailors, brawny men of all condition... neighbourhood hookers, high society ladies ... Nobody speaks, nobody moves, jazz sounds ... There´s a plump man screaming at the top of his voice going by the performance of his trombone, there´s a ruthless pianist, a bull fiddler scraping its strings without listening the others. They address to one´s best, to the most self-governing boundary, to the innermost area driving back both gloom and ritornello, to the deafening outburst of each instant. They clang asking for you instead of swinging you ´.Jean-Paul Sartre / Nick´s Bar. New York City.
Aaron Goldberg / Homage Concert for Pio Lindegaard 2006
Mark Turner / Homage Concert for Pio Lindegaard 2006
Avishai Cohen / Getxo Jazz Festival 2008
Rodney Green / Getxo Festival 2008´Jazz was a zen art, wasn´t it? The controlled spontaneity. In the same way as the inked sumi-e painting, like the haiku, like the kendo fencing; jazz wasn´t something schemed in advance, it was something which was done. You rehearsed, played your scales, learned its fragments by heart and then put all of your knowledge and expertise in the moment´s service.
And in jazz each instant is a crisis - said Sato, citing Wynton Marsalis-, and one put all of his skill at stake to bear it. - Like the swordsman, the archer, the poet and the painter: everything is there. There isn´t any future or past, only that moment and how you face it. Art happens ´.
Christopher Moore / A very dirty work
Mark Copland / Homage Concert for Pio Lindegaard 2008
Philip Catherine / Getxo Jazz Festival 2006
Mikel Andueza / Getxo Jazz Festival 2008
Miroslav Vitous / Getxo Jazz Festival 2006In one of his futuristic stories, the American writer Philip K. Dick wondered: ´ Do androids dream of electric sheep? ... Following that symbolic track of reflection, some nearer questions could be raised: Are different the ideas, the perceptions or the instants chosen by the photographers because they use digital cameras? Do we think about bits, Kbytes, Megas, histograms ... or do we think - and feel - in images? Do we open our own windows regarding the scene or do we open Windows on a screen?
Paolo Fresu / Getxo Jazz Festival 2007
Kristian Brink / Getxo Jazz Festival 2008
Sheryl Bentyne - Manhattan Transfer- /Getxo Jazz Festival 2008
Billy Cobham / Getxo Jazz Festival 2006Languages sometimes make easy doubtful word games, but it is interesting the experience of asking a program the automatic translation of "Bits of Jazz": there isn´t any computer reference, only ´pieces, fragments, portions - even tiny parts of Jazz´ . Therefore, from my viewpoint, the capturing tool being used becomes a secondary aspect, since the key aim is not either a binary code or a photochemical reaction, but the subjective expression of a fragment / instant of light, shadow ... and music under this circumstance.
Conrad Hertwig / Getxo Jazz Festival 2006
Jorge Pardo / Getxo Jazz Festival 2006
Henri Texier / Getxo Jazz Festival 2007
John McLaughlin / Getxo Jazz Festival 2008I have photographed Jazz in Getxo for 17 years, Some of these images have appeared in diffe- rent advertisements, pages of various magazines (mainly Cuadernos de Jazz - Madrid, Spain- and Jazz Hot - Paris, France -) and some Galleries in Internet. But the exhibitions - the old system of copy on photographic paper hanged on a wall - are maybe the means where I find more freedom on putting forward my own vision of Jazz instants, and where I´m able to simultaneously imagine a more straightforward music with the component conferring a complete meaning to those images: the people watching them, pondering on them and - I hope ... - feeling them.
Charlie Haden / Getxo Jazz Festival 2007
Marius Neset / Getxo Jazz Festival 2007
Didier Lockwood / Getxo Jazz Festival 2006
Greg Osby / Homage Concert for Pio Lindegaard 2007Therefore, which can be the meaning of the pictures setting up "Bits of Jazz"? I do believe that among other things, they do reassert me in my conviction that with them there is no risk ´ to dream of electric sheep´... because there aren´t androids at either side of the camera or the photographs´. Only an attempt to implement a live and direct communication as befalls with Jazz.
Lee Konitz / Getxo Jazz Festival 2007
Stanley Clarke / Homage Concert for Pio Lindegaard 2007
Louis Sclavis / Getxo Jazz Festival 2007
Aldo Romano / Getxo Jazz Festival 2007
Archie Shepp / Getxo Jazz Festival 2008Jose Horna
www.jazzografias.com
Translated into English by jmse