art letters
JAZZ HOT
William P. Gottlieb (American, 1917-2006) Portrait of Billie Holiday, Downbeat, New York, NY, c. Feb. 1947 Digital print from high resolution scan of 4 x 5 inch black and white negative William P. Gottlieb Collection, Library of Congress
A new exhibition at the Miramar Cultural Center ArtsPark is a jam session of celebrated jazz photographers “Hot can be cool, and cool can be hot and each can be both. But hot or cool man, jazz is jazz.” So said Louis Armstrong, whose raspy voice and melodic trumpet turned him into a musical immortal. All that Jazz: Photographs of Jazz Legends, features a portrait of Armstrong, trumpet at his lips (see pg. 20); with images of Billie Holiday, shown here; Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker and a host of other celebrated artists. The exhibition runs through May at the Miramar Cultural Center ArtsPark. The photographers, Jerry Stoll and the late Herman Leonard and William P. Gottlieb, demonstrated through their work that facial expressions and other imagery are as much a part of a live jazz performance as the sounds. Leonard has even been praised as, “the greatest jazz photographer in the history of the genre” by saxophonist William Jefferson Clinton, better known as the 42nd president of the United States. —Kingsley Guy
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