THROUGH MY EYES : JAZZ MOMENTS IN THE CAPITAL DISTRICT - ALBERT W. BROOKS - 10/11-11/12/17
Albert W. Brooks is a long-term resident of Albany, New York, and native of Charleston, South Carolina, who has been practicing the art of photographing jazz musicians in performance for about ten years. A retired public sector attorney for thirty years, Brooks came to photography late in life as a way to get closer to the music and its creative energy.
“Jazz music, performed at its best, is an improvisatory art form that embodies standards of excellence, virtuosity and beauty. Jazz musicians devote years (indeed lifetimes) to learning, developing and honing their skills as practitioners of this quintessentially American art form. Though its historical nascence is in fact American, jazz is so well loved and recognized as an international art form that, many of its greatest adherents are musicians from around the world who are drawn to its beauty, creative complexity and limitless improvisational possibilities.”
“With my photography, I try to capture some of the moments of artistic creativity, surprise, interplay, striving, repose, energy and emotion typically expressed in a jazz musical context.”
Brooks is also a student of jazz saxophone and has studied with musicians such as Dan Faulk, Don Byron and Marty Erhlich.