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I don’t really know Cyrus Chestnut. He is in the middle of a dandy career, but our paths have rarely crossed. In 1985, he was part of a Berklee student ensemble led by Phil Wilson during that year’s Floating Jazz Festival. I remember little about Phil’s band and how Cyrus played in it, but I do remember a picture I took of him, sitting on the beach with Art Hodes, who was sixty years older, and Monica Zetterlund, who was on the ship as a passenger. An odd trio. Thirteen years later, in July 1998, Oren Jacoby telephoned and said he would be directing a film celebrating the music of Duke Ellington, featuring the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. We had spoken about the project for many months, but now it was a reality. Wynton Marsalis would lead the band and there would be star soloists and a bevy of dancers. The show was to be taped at The Supper Club on West 48th Street. He thought there might be some good photographic opportunities and urged that I load my cameras and come by, which I did. There were a number of interesting opportunities, but one was much better than average. It turned out the pianist in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra was Cyrus. At the first rehearsal, if someone had set out to dress him for an interesting photograph, they couldn’t have done better than he did himself. I took one look and knew what I had to do. I crept into the balcony above the band and took half a dozen pictures looking down at all the stripes, the keyboard and the sheet music. The same picture, taken during the taping, with Cyrus in a tux, would have been very ordinary. You know immediately when you have a good one. |
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