SEATTLE PHOTOGRAPHERS BLOG

Had the opportunity to photograph the Ponto family recently. I like this one a lot.

A true legend of modern jazz, seldom seen outside of his work with Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock returned to Seattle with his sparkling trio of Marc Copland, piano, and the great Joey Baron on drums on Feb 20th at the Seattle Art Museum

The senior statesman Peacock has traveled far and wide in the realms of jazz, playing key roles in some of the art form’s most meditative as well as the most daring explorations. Early on he played with West Coast stars like Art Pepper, then accompanied Miles Davis, but also found his way into the soaring, sometimes torrid experimentation of Albert Ayler. He also worked with great innovators like Jimmy Giuffre, Bill Evans, Roland Kirk, George Russell, Tony Williams, and Paul Bley.

Peacock has always been known as a player of rare ability in the most heady of jazz, but also the most heartfelt. He expanded his abilities not only technically but aesthetically, hearing his way on the bandstands and off into idiosyncratic resonances. In Japan, he studied eastern religions and medicine; in Seattle, in the early 1970s, he studied biology at the University of Washington. By then, he was ready to begin his long association with pianist Keith Jarrett and drummer Jack DeJohnette; it occurred on Peacock’s ECM debut Tales of Another, in 1977. Peacock then spent four years in Seattle teaching at Cornish College of the Arts until 1983 when ECM guru Manfred Eicher asked Jarrett, DeJohnette, and Peacock to come together formally as the Standards Trio, which for 25 years would transcendentally define the jazz trio.

Since 2000, in the Standards Trio’s last decade, Peacock began a string of other stellar associations – with Bley, drummer Paul Motian, pianist Marilyn Crispell, saxophonist Lee Konitz, guitarist Bill Frisell, and others – and then formed in 2015 the Gary Peacock Trio that performs this month in Seattle. It sees him join forces with two earlier colleagues: drummer Joey Baron, with whom he, Konitz, and Frisell recorded Enfants Terribles: Live at the Blue Note, in 2012; and pianist Marc Copland, whom he has often accompanied in recent times.

The trio’s Now This appeared last summer, timed to the bassist’s 80th birthday, with Peacock compositions old and new as well as pieces by Baron, Copland, and Peacock’s fellow bass giant and late Bill Evans accompanist, Scott LaFaro. All the pieces, Thomas Conrad wrote in making the album an Editor’s Pick in JazzTimes, are like Peacock’s solos: “spare, self-contained figures of mysterious expectancy. In his haunting high bass lines, melodies linger, resolve, and disappear.”

Not long ago I had the pleasure of photographing a couple, Carmen D’Arcangelo  and Dave Page and we made so wonderful portraits at Carkeek Park.This popular park offers extraordinary views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains and has 220 acres of lush forest, meadows, wetlands, creeks, and beach.

My second Downbeat cover of the year was of Brian Blade and his Fellowship band. They played and Earshot jazz concert at the Seattle Art Museum and I had them in the studio for a portrait session the day before. They were wonderful to photograph and I loved hearing their music.
Brian is an exceptional musician Here are a couple of pictures from the concert.

I photographed Dave Holland and his Quartet for a cover story in the February issue of Downbeat Magazine. Here are some of the pictures they ran. Dave Holland (bass), Kevin Eubanks (guitar), Craig Taborn (piano/keys) and Eric Harland (drums) –  played at Jazz Alley presenting songs from their CD Prism.

Last month. Lacrosse Magazine, assigned me to make some photographs for an upcoming profile of a local student athlete. It was an inspiring story of high school lacrosse attackman Cooper Woolston, who plays with a prosthetic leg for Seattle’s Division II Nathan Hale High School

Cooper is a junior at University Prep and has been playing at the highest level for years despite having to play with a prosthetic leg. He was wonderful to photograph and has committed to play NCAA Div. III lacrosse at Swarthmore College. I wish him the best of luck in his college career on the field and in the classroom.

On a recent assignment for Workforce Magazine on a story about employees who work from home, I photographed Todd Lovern. Todd works from his home office for General Electric’s Health Care division.
It was a very comfortable setting for a portrait and the light was with us that day.

Saturday night I photographed a group of Lakeside students as they were about to leave for the annual OLOT dance. They assembled at the home of Kurt and Mary on Queen Anne , parents of  Philip

and the above picture was taken on the back deck of their  home as the sun was setting. Click here for a link to a web gallery of the entire set of images I collected.

Here are a couple more images.

Bill Frisell performed the music he composed for the film THE GREAT FLOOD by Bill Morrison at the Moore Theatre on March 2. Bill Morrison’s new film is about an event that happened 86 years ago. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in the history of the United States. It inundated 27,000 square miles and displaced more than a million people and caused over $400 million in damages and killed 246 people in seven states.
Bill Frisell composed some quartet music for the film and was accompanied by trumpeter Ron Miles, bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen. It would be something not to miss if they ever do it again in Seattle.