Art Gallery
At the Jazz Forum, we present a rotating exhibit of local and regional artists in the club space, available for sale with proceeds going to the artists and Jazz Forum Arts, the non-profit that runs the club.
Currently on Exhibit: Impressions of Jazz
The Jazz Forum Winter 2019 Art Exhibit features photographs, drawings, collages and paintings of notable jazz artists by Andres Chaparro, Ken Frankling, Omar Kharem, Mitchell Seidel and Alice Soyer. Click on an image to view it in full size.
Interested in the Art?
All pieces are on display during our weekend shows. We also offer private viewings during the week for interested buyers.
Please contact ellen@jazzforumarts.org or call 914-631-1000 for inquiries or to arrange a viewing appointment.
Artist Biography
Andres Chaparro
Andres Chaparro is a mixed media painter and collagist whose bold and expressive art is a visual representation of jazz music. Chaparro’s work most recently in 2017 has been published in the book “Making The Cut, Volume 1, The World’s Best Collage Artists” by Crooks Press in Australia. As his work continues to rise in recognition and garnered by art and music enthusiast around the globe, Andres continues to refine his own visual vocabulary through his focus on the intersection between art and music.
As early as he can remember, music and art have been an important part of his life. At the age of 13, Andres was introduced to jazz music which he made an instant spiritual connection. This was a defining moment in his life as an artist. While in high school he would make frequent visits to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, which opened up the world of visual art for him. He always had an affinity for drawing, but it was the museum visits that made him fall in love with art.
In the late 1980’s Andres began painting on canvas, while completing his studies in New York City. He explored jazz as an enthusiast and visited SoHo art galleries and other major museums during this time. Chaparro early paintings explored different mediums and subject matters; but he was always drawn back to Jazz inspired work.
Andres’ paints out of his Windsor, CT studio, his mix media paintings incorporate collage, oil pastels, marker, crayon, pencil, acrylic, spray paint and found objects. His artwork is fluid and free, and the paintings reflect more concern for spontaneous emotion rather than traditional conventions, strong color contrast, and distorted subject matter. His paintings can be found in a myriad of permanent public and private art collections nationally and internationally.
Ken Franckling
Ken Franckling is a veteran arts writer/photographer specializing in music photography. He covered the jazz scene throughout the Northeast for more than 30 years. He now focuses his lens on jazz in culture-rich southwest Florida, as well as annual visits to the Newport Jazz Festival, which Ken has covered since 1981.
He won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award in 1987 for excellence in music journalism and is a contributing writer/photographer for JazzTimes, Hot House and other publications. He won the Jazz Journalists Association’s Lona Foote-Bob Parent Award as Jazz Photographer of the Year in 2003 and 2016.
He has published “Jazz in the Key of Light: Eighty of our Finest Jazz Musicians Speak for Themselves,” a 160-page coffee-table-style photo book available in limited edition. Over the course of his career, he has written about and/or photographed jazz musicians many publications.
Omar Kharem
Omar Kharem is a photographer and a musician/composer. Born in Manhattan in 1927, he is a native New Yorker. In the late 1950’s Omar became interested in photography and made his first photograph with a Kodak Brownie camera. In the early 1960’s, he switched to 35mm Nescon camera and eventually added Pentax HIA and Pentax H3, which he has used for the majority of his photographs. Also added were a Canon FTQL and the Nikon Photonic to his collection of cameras.
In 1965 Kharem began working as a professional free lance photographer doing work for community organizations, business groups, entertainers, theatre performers, dance and many other cultural and political events. As a photographer, it was Kharem’s good fortune to have many jazz musicians as friends and published his first series of jazz photographs in a magazine essay on Jazz in 1966. Among these first photographs were of fellow musicians in the act of improvising, creating great Jazz and a great influence on his photography throughout his life.
Beginning with Kharem’s first exhibition in 1968 at the NAG on the Lower East Side, he has exhibited his work at many other galleries and museums up to the present time including, but not limited to, Studio Museum of Harlem, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art and other venues in New York City.
In 1991, after 10 years of working in the photography industry as a spotter, retoucher, copy camera operator and printer, Kharem retired to concentrate on his photography and return to playing and composing music. Kharem currently lives in Yonkers, New York.
Mitchell Seidel
For photographer Mitchell Seidel, the most interesting images of jazz musicians aren’t found on stage, but on the sidelines — a backstage dressing room, a table out front — just about anywhere out of the spotlight. Asked why he eschews the performance photograph in favor of his distinctive un-posed environmental portraits, Seidel contends simply, “Anyone can take a picture of someone with a horn in their mouth.” He’s got a point.
Despite the many memorable, often iconic images of jazz musicians in performance, making such photographs is a little Seidel recalls. Immediately smitten, he wrote to his mother and asked her to send negatives of family photos for him to print. His first exposure to jazz came during his high school years at the home of Springfield neighbor Morty Geist, the father of a classmate. Geist, a saxophonist who played with Ray McKinley’s big band, became a renowned teacher of music in the Union, New Jersey school system and was a charter member of the National Association of Jazz Educators (now the IAJE).
Alice Soyer
Alice Soyer is a visual artist and singer-songwriter.
"Paris. It all started with classical piano lessons and at home listening to my father’s voice singing French repertoire. One day my piano teacher, passionate about jazz and pop music, introduced me to Rickie Lee Jones. Then and there, I knew that I had to sing. I finally quit the conservatory, started to explore my own voice and write my first songs. My piano became then my best companion, always remembering the harmonies of Ravel and Debussy…
As a child, I used to find an easy refuge in activities that required the use of creativity like drawing and painting. As a singer songwriter I had the great fortune to work with fantastic musicians involved in jazz like Sylvain Luc, Bob James and David Sanborn. Based in Tarrytown, songwriting and visual art are in constant interaction."