10/17/09

Photos by Herman Leonard on Exhibit at Jazz at Lincoln Center and Montreal

By Lee Mergner

Legendary jazz photographer and frequent JT contributor Herman Leonard is a busy man at the moment. His show, the aptly-titled “In the Best Possible Light: Herman Leonard’s Jazz,” opened on October 13 at Jazz at Lincoln Center and runs through February 14, 2010. Another show “Herman Leonard Retrospective” will open October 22 in Montreal and will run until February 7.

The Lincoln Center show features masterworks in black and white photography by Herman Leonard, whose pictures of jazz icons Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, and Thelonious Monk among many others - make him the dean of jazz photographers. According a press release from Jazz at Lincoln Center, “This exhibition of Herman Leonard's jazz pictures honors a great photographer and some of the most beautiful photographs ever taken. ‘I want to show jazz artists in the best possible light,’ says Leonard, ‘to tell their truth but to tell it in terms of beauty.’” The show will include more than forty classic black and white photographs of jazz icons, many of whom were captured during the virtual renaissance period of jazz, at least for bebop, in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. A video presentation will accompany the exhibit. In addition, all photos in the exhibit are available for sale through the Morrison Hotel Gallery online and at all Jazz at Lincoln Center performances throughout the duration of the exhibit.

Leonard’s show in Montreal will inaugurate the new exhibition hall in Montreal's Maison du Festival Rio Tinto Alcan. The exhibit of forty classic images of the greats of Jazz will be on display for four months and prints will be available for purchase. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

Leonard will also be making some very special promotional appearances connected with the show in New York City. On Monday, October 19, he will be appearing as part of The Conversation Series at Columbia University, in a panel discussion introduced and moderated by Robert G. O’Meally of Columbia. The event begins at 7:30 PM and will be held at 301 Philosophy Hall at 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue on the Columbia University Morningside Campus in New York City. The following morning on Tuesday, October 20, he will be featured on NBC’s Today Show.

For more information about these shows and Herman Leonard’s photography, you can visit his web site.