Audio Made Visual

Cliché as the saying may be, the right picture really is worth a thousand words. Peter Gannushkin’s Downtownmusic.net has been mentioned before in these pages and a convenient link has nestled in the cluttered Bags Points of Interest section for years. Still, given the scope and longevity of his enterprise (no sign of lapsing or lagging in nearly seven years) another shout out is hardly out of order. The man appears a tireless shutterbug, snapping any and all improvisers who touch down and hold court in the Five Boroughs area. Thanks to his lens I’ve been able to put face to name on dozens of musicians from old guard heroes like Charles Burnham and Joe Daley to younger talent like Tyshawn Sorey and Daniel Levin. To put it in another frame of reference: Gannushkin’s camera captured the visual contents of several hundred gigs last year alone. That impressive figure telescopes to a couple thousand over the site’s run thus far. His preference is for close-ups, presumably for easier indexing of shots by subject’s name, but many of the full ensemble compositions could easily qualify as album cover material. Some no doubt have. There’s also an admirable balance between color and black & white. Long sell short: it’s a library of images that consumes hours if your not careful.

Downside, though it’s a perfectly understandable one and a savvy move on the part of Gannushkin: None of the images lend themselves to capture via web browser. Interested parties must go through the proper channels and presumably pay the proper fees for usage. Makes sense to me. And before anyone gets bent over the many imbedded links to Downtown Music Gallery (there’s another one!), let me be the first to say I salute the move. Gannushkin’s been quietly doing the creative music community an immeasurable service, much like earlier photo-documentarians answering to surnames like Wolff, Wilderman and Willoughby, the last of whom is responsible for that everlasting Big Jay McNeely spectacle above.