the jazz loft project was conceived by photographer w. eugene smith during the late 50′s and early 60′s in new york. during this timeframe, smith collected approximately 4,000 hours of reel-to-reel tape recordings, and took nearly 40,000 photos, in his lower manhattan loft apartment. some of the main artists passing thru smith’s loft included roy haynes, sonny rollins, bill evans, roland kirk, alice coltrane, don cherry, thelonius monk, and paul bley. recordings included jam sessions, rehearsals, and casual conversations.

thanks to sam stephenson, the jazz loft project has lifted off. as of fall 2009, two thirds of smith’s audio recordings had been catalogued. according to stephenson: “one hour of smith’s audio requires three hours of work to properly index it for content. each new reel of tape yields new people to track down or new historical items to research.”

some of the recordings are available for streaming at the project’s website, as well as a substantial amount of photographs and other useful information. we certainly look forward to hearing more about the project in the future.

check out the jazz loft project here.