GIANT STEP ARTS
EARLY IN 2019, THREE JAZZ CDS APPEARED ON A NEW RECORD LABEL. THEY WERE JASON PALMER’S RHYME AND REASON, JOHNATHAN BLAKE’S TRION (BOTH DOUBLE CDS), AND ERIC ALEXANDER’S LEAP OF FAITH. THE LABEL WAS GIANT STEP ARTS.
GIVEN THAT HUNDREDS OF JAZZ RECORDS—MANY OF THEM GOOD—ARE RELEASED EVERY MONTH, AND THAT NEW JAZZ LABELS POP UP ALL THE TIME, IS THE RELEASE OF THREE NEW ALBUMS REALLY NEWS?
GIANT STEP ARTS IS NEWS. FOR STARTERS, IT IS RADICALLY MORE THAN A RECORD LABEL. THE STORY BEGINS WITH JIMMY KATZ.
You may not know his name, but if you’re any kind of jazz fan, his photographs are part of the imagery in your mind’s eye when you think about the music. Katz has documented more than 550 recording sessions and shot more than 180 magazine covers. Many of his portraits are iconic: Inscrutable Ornette Coleman. Mag-isterial Sonny Rollins in front of the Williamsburg Bridge. Tony Bennett, serene as the prince he is.
Katz is the first-call photographer of jazz, but in the second decade of the new millennium his name began to be listed on jazz CDs as engineer. Many people, myself included, first assumed it was a different Jimmy Katz. But Katz had become a self-taught engineer, specializing in live recordings.
Jazz audiophiles have long confronted a dilemma. Most of their favorite albums are live recordings because, at their best, live albums capture the raw truth—the . Think of Bill Evans’s . The audience chatter and the
