[NEohioPAL] Photographer Frank Kuchirchuk Donates Rare 1950s Jazz Photographs to Oberlin Conservatory of Music

[Marci Janas]

 *Media Contact:*
Marci Janas, Director of Conservatory Communications
440-775-8328 (office); 440-667-2724 (cell);
marci.janas at oberlin.edu<marci.janas at oberlin.edu?subject=RE%3A%20Photographer%20Frank%20Kuchirchuk%20Donates%20Rare%201950s%20Jazz%20Photographs%20to%20the%20Oberlin%20Conservatory>


*Photographer Frank Kuchirchuk Donates Rare
1950s Jazz Photographs to Oberlin
*

*Images of Legends Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Art
Tatum, Stan Getz and More

*
OBERLIN, OHIO (February 20, 2009) — Frank Kuchirchuk, a retired photographer
who took live performance photographs of some of the greatest jazz artists
during the height of their careers, has donated his entire collection of
jazz images to the Oberlin Conservatory of
Music<http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/>.
The Frank Kuchirchuk Collection of Jazz Photography contains some 200
images, most of which are negatives that have never been seen by the public.
The collection will be cataloged and archived within Oberlin's Phyllis
Litoff Building <http://www2.oberlin.edu/litoff/>, which is currently under
construction and scheduled to open later this year. A selection of the
photographs will be displayed within the building, which will house
Oberlin's Jazz Studies
Department<http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/departments/jazz-studies/>and
its academic programs in music history and music theory.

Kuchirchuk, 84, lives at the Ohio Veterans Home in Sandusky. He was
moonlighting from his day job as a photographer for the International News
Service (INS) in the early 1950s when he took the photos, nearly all of them
at Lindsay's Sky Bar, a famous Cleveland nightclub. The images provide a
fascinating glimpse into the performance styles of numerous jazz legends,
among them Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Art Tatum, Stan
Getz, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, and Anita O'Day. Kuchirchuk's
photographs are unique precisely because they capture the energy of a live
performance; they are not portraiture, publicity stills, or session shots.
And one other important factor sets them apart: most of them have never been
printed or published.

Kuchirchuk's process was inventive, if not cumbersome and painstaking.
Because he wanted to achieve "a theatricality, something extremely dramatic"
in his performance shots, he says that he "began playing around" with
different lighting techniques and effects. "I would sit at home with the
lights down and listen to jazz records. The warmth that I felt in those
performances when I was sitting in my darkened room was what I wanted to
accomplish with my photographs," he says.

To do this he used flash lighting in multiple locations in addition to the
flash on the camera itself—he set one light up behind the stage for
backlighting, and one or two off to either side of the stage. "I could
unplug the light on the camera to achieve different effects," he says. The
flash bulbs that he used had to be replaced after each exposure. To avoid
disrupting the performance, he had to wait until a set concluded so that he
could change out the flash bulbs and take another photo.

Kuchirchuk photographed the musicians during their performances using a 4 x
5 Speed Graphic press camera—equipment that he says was not normally used in
this context. The camera's large format allowed him to capture a
considerable amount of information in each frame. The 4 x 5 Speed Graphic
(the camera of choice for hard-bitten, fedora-wearing crime photographers of
1940s film noir) contained only one film holder, meaning it could capture
only two images before the camera had to be reloaded, a process—like
switching out the flash bulbs—that could take anywhere from 30 to 40
seconds. This sort of winner-take-all limitation imposed by the camera meant
that Kuchirchuk had to compose his shots with tremendous care.

Kuchirchuk's only national recognition was fleeting: the 1953
*Metronome*Yearbookfeatured his work in a 16-page spread, naming him
Photographer of the Year.
The Sky Bar closed in 1954, and Kuchirchuk never took another jazz
photograph. The large-as-life images he had captured on film were put aside
while he concentrated on photo assignments for INS and, later, United Press
International. (One of those assignments included coverage of the notorious
Sam Sheppard murder case and trial in 1954.)

"I realized that I had a valuable asset in these photos but didn't know what
to do with them until I read about Oberlin," says Kuchirchuk. A November
2007 *Plain Dealer* article about several million dollars in gifts donated
to Oberlin for the Phyllis Litoff Building, inspired him to entrust his
collection to Oberlin: "I thought, 'Hey—everybody knows about Oberlin!'"
Kuchirchuk sensed that Oberlin's reputation as one of the country's top
conservatories, as well as its national profile, would secure for the
collection the protection and the attention that it deserves.

"As a sometime photographer myself, I was very excited when Frank first
contacted me about his collection," says Associate Dean of the
Conservatory Michael
Lynn<http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/faculty/faculty-detail.dot?id=20957>,
who is also professor of recorder and baroque flute and curator of musical
instruments. "I have now gotten to know each image thoroughly during the
process of scanning the negatives and doing some minor restoration. Every
photograph Frank took speaks with its own voice, bringing life to the
musicians. You can almost hear the music just by looking at them."

"I think this is a tremendous gift," says Professor of African American
Music Wendell Logan<http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/faculty/faculty-detail.dot?id=20949>,
Chair of Oberlin's Jazz Studies Department. "Typically there are a few
popular photos that reappear in different contexts that we're all familiar
with. His catalog consists of photos that have never been seen before. For
students to see images of the people who actually created the music that
they're learning to play—in various performance contexts—is a very
beneficial thing. These names jump from the page when you can associate a
picture with them. We are certainly indebted to him for thinking of us."

This spring Oberlin is planning a special exhibition of selected images from
the Kuchirchuk Collection at a date and venue to be announced. When the Phyllis
Litoff Building<http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/news/detail.dot?id=150143>opens
later this year, the photographs will find their permanent home.

*About the Oberlin Conservatory of Music*
The Oberlin Conservatory of Music, founded in 1865 and situated amid the
intellectual vitality of Oberlin College since 1867, is the oldest
continuously operating conservatory in the United States. Renowned
internationally as a professional music school of the highest caliber and
pronounced a "national treasure" by the *Washington Post*, its alumni have
gone on to achieve illustrious careers in all aspects of the serious music
world. In reviewing the American premiere of Olga Neuwirth's opera *Lost
Highway *for the *New York Times*, Vivien Schweitzer noted that "Oberlin has
produced some of the top names in contemporary music … Oberlin's rural
experimental haven has resulted in successful music careers in a cutthroat
marketplace." Oberlin offers a premier undergraduate jazz studies
program<http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/departments/jazz-studies/>,
chaired by Professor of African American Music Wendell
Logan<http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/faculty/faculty-detail.dot?id=20949>,
that prepares students for careers as professional jazz musicians and for
advanced study in jazz. The jazz studies faculty includes composers and
performers who, in addition to teaching lessons and coaching ensembles,
maintain active performing careers throughout the world. Numerous Oberlin
alumni have achieved success in the jazz idiom, among them keyboardist Ted
Baker, pianist and composer Stanley Cowell, bassist, composer, and arranger
Leon Lee Dorsey, pianist, arranger, and producer Allen Farnham, bassist Ben
Jaffe, composer and pianist Jon Jang, writer, composer, and saxophonist
James McBride, and trumpeter, trombonist, and composer Michael Mossman.

For more information about Oberlin, please visit
www.oberlin.edu.<http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/>

###

Visit the Oberlin Conservatory of Music Press
Room<http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/press-room/>or subscribe to
our RSS feed for more breaking news.

<http://new.oberlin.edu/conservatory/press-room/rss.dot?catKeyI=con-pr>

**

*
*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20090220/e908cef5/attachment-0003.htm>