May 2nd, 2008, 10am
In the summer of 1958, photographer Art Kane gathered fifty-seven jazz musicians on a Harlem stoop for A Great Day in Harlem, one of the best-known photographs in jazz.
The picture, published in Esquire, included Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and dozens of others. It also left out plenty of major names. Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Duke Ellington weren't even there, proving how hard it is to get a large group of musicians together in one place. Still, the photograph became famous; one of the best-known jazz photographs ever taken.
In 2008, Coda Magazine turned fifty, which happened to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Kane's photograph. Someone at Coda had the idea to mark the occasion with a Canadian version. The plan was to photograph groups of musicians in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver and Coda asked me to photograph the Vancouver version.
At the time I was shooting concerts regularly at the Jazz Cellar and contributing photographs to Coda. Getting people together was a little different in 2008. There were no group chats and Facebook events weren't yet mainstream. There was no easy way to track who you'd told or who was actually going to show up. We were only a few years removed from formalized phone trees.
Coda picked May 2 as the date and I needed somewhere to put everyone.
My first choice was the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery, but they were booked, so I went with Queen Elizabeth Park instead. There's a wide set of stone steps below the Bloedel Conservatory, with enough room for a large group and plenty of space for me to stand back with a camera.
There was only one instruction from Coda: take the photograph at exactly 10:00 a.m. Not one second before or after. And being west coast musicians, this seemed a little optimistic for a Saturday morning.
I got there around nine and set up unsure of what was to follow. Then bassist Allan Johnston arrived.
Then more people started appearing in ones and twos, then in larger groups. Before I knew it there were 30 musicians, then 50 musicians. Every time I turned around there were more people.
By ten o'clock, 104 musicians had shown up. Far more than I'd expected.
It was a pretty good cross-section of the Vancouver scene. There were musicians who had been playing professionally for decades, students, community players and a few people who came in from outside the city. Still a lot of people were missing too. Some had gigs. Some were away. Some probably never got the message.
Click...
And with that, it was done. 10:00:00 a.m.
Since I had more than a hundred musicians standing around, it seemed silly not to do something else with them. We organized shots by instrument: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, guitars, basses, organs, pianos, drums and singers.
Saxophone Section
Of course having the photo was only the start. I needed to document who was in the photo. But there had been no registration. I didn't have a list of people who said they were coming. Nobody checked in when they arrived. The whole thing had spread through email, phone calls and word of mouth. Urgh.
I knew there were 104 people in the photo and by working through friends and colleagues in the community I identified almost everyone. Almost. 104 people and 103 names.
I still don't know who number 29 is.
The photograph is almost twenty years old now, which is strange to think about.
Some of the people in it were already well established in 2008. Some were students. Some were just starting to show up at gigs around town. Since then, people have moved, retired or died. A lot has changed.
I see a lot when I look at this photo now: friends and teachers, people I played with, gigs we shared, and an extraordinary amount of music.
The musicians in the photograph
All identified except number 29, who I can't place. If I got anything wrong, please reach out and let me know!
A big thank you to everyone who got up early after gigs, had that extra cup of coffee and traveled from out of town for the picture. 🙏🏻