Jimmy Katz

Giant Step Arts: a Visionary Jazz Concept by Jimmy Katz

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. Magisterial 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 juice. Think of Bill Evans's Sunday at the Village Vanguard. The audience chatter and the clinking glasses are fleeting, random events in time, preserved for eternity along with the music. But sonically, jazz audiophiles' favorite albums are studio recordings because, at their best, they have the resolution. Think of almost any ECM album recorded at Rainbow Studio in Oslo by founder Manfred Eicher and the great engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug.

Katz's recordings give you both. Speaking of juice, take Bop Juice: Live at Smalls, by Ralph Lalama, recorded at the cramped, cultish Greenwich Village jazz dive and released on the SmallsLIVE label in 2012. It makes you sweat. Katz jams you into the crowd. You are there, on the night. But you also hear, with startling clarity, Lalama's tenor saxophone, squalling and blasting about seven feet in front of you. In January 2018, when Katz announced the founding of Giant Step Arts, a new 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, he said that GSA would seek out artists on the leading edges of jazz and offer them support free of commercial pressures. The support would include presenting a series of live performances of artists' premieres; compensating the artists well; preserving the concerts on CDs with production, engineering, and photography by Katz; providing the leader of each session with 800 CDs and files for 24-bit/96kHz downloads to sell directly; allowing the artists to own the master recordings; providing photos and videos (by Katz) for promotional use; and setting up PR support through respected media firm Braithwaite & Katz (no relation). It was an unprecedented concept (footnote 1).

"In the United States, there is inadequate support for the arts," Katz told me during an interview in New York. "I've had this idea for many years but could not implement it until I found a group of donors who believed in me. GSA has very low overhead. We have a small team with a unique set of skills.

I do the recording and the photography. Dave Darlington does the mixing and mastering. My wife, Dena, does the design and layout and website. Ann Braithwaite does the PR. We are very efficient. Unlike most nonprofits, we put most of the money I raise into the hands of the artists."

When you speak at length to Katz, you understand that he is a special combination of aspirational idealism and no-bullshit realism. The idealism is reflected in his lofty ambitions for the music that comes out of the GSA project: "My background is photography. A great photograph overwhelms. Seeing it changes you. It is not just 'nice.' Hearing great jazz changes you. I once heard Sonny Rollins in his prime, just warming up. My jaw hit the floor. The first time I heard McCoy Tyner, he struck one chord, and it was like the heavens opened up, like a thunderbolt from God. I am not interested in putting out some nice jazz records. I work with artists who are ready to make large, bold artistic statements. I expect them to try to make a masterpiece. That puts a lot of pressure on them. But I work with the greatest musicians now playing jazz. When I approach musicians, I ask them, 'What would be your dream ensemble? Who are the people who will help you make your best artistic statement?' That's how we end up with people like Chris Potter and Mark Turner and Linda Oh in our bands. That's why one of our leaders, Johnathan Blake, also appears as a sideman." 

Jimmy Katz, famous photographer and respected engineer, has now added three more titles to his résumé: fundraiser, program manager, and record producer. Anyone who has produced a record has fantasized about making a "large, bold artistic statement." Katz has done it, three times. Giant Step Arts is news for that reason. There probably are more such statements to come.

Original article: https://www.stereophile.com/content/giant-step-arts-visionary-jazz-concept