Out There: Frank Kofsky Photo Collection
Notable jazz resources online and elsewhere.
Frank Kofsky is known as a writer rather than as a photographer, but he also took some noteworthy pictures at a crucial moment in avant-garde jazz’s history. Kofsky’s papers have been donated to the University of California, Santa Cruz, whose library has made Kofsky’s pictures fully available online. Browsing through the ca. 400 digitized pictures demands a bit of work as they are not always labeled perfectly, but this is part of the beauty of archives. In the 1960s, Kofsky also had an interest in the rock movement, and the online collection doesn’t separate the jazz material from photographs of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and others.
I have attempted to date the few pictures below precisely. Kofsky did not photograph a very high number of concerts, the fragments of information below can provide pointers to date pictures when browsing the full online collection.
Kofsky shot a great series of pictures (likely) at Archie Shepp’s 27 Cooper Square apartment. There isn’t much available light, the rehearsal seems to be taking place during a very hot summer, likely 1966, and the place is cramped, but the session produced some of the more original photographs.
That same summer of 1966, a series of important avant-garde concerts took place at the Village Theatre. Kofsky photographed several performances, including an August 12, 1966 appearance of the John Coltrane group with pianist Alice Coltrane (see my interview with Black Unity Trio drummer Hasan Shahid for his memories of this concert).
This Pharoah Sanders picture was possibly taken during the same August 12, 1966 concert. Other pictures seems to indicate Sanders guested with saxophonist Marion Brown, who played the opening set, and he was also part of the Coltrane group.
Some of Kofsky’s most interesting pictures come from performances given in Central Park during cellist Charlotte Moorman’s Fourth Annual Avant-Garde Festival. In addition to Bill Dixon, they notably show trumpeter Dewey Johnson, Marion Brown, and bassist Sirone. Ben Young’s classic Dixonia gives September 9, 1966 as the exact date.
Albert Ayler also played during the Village Theatre series, but the personnel on Kofsky’s pictures of the saxophonist, which include bassist Mutawaf A. Shaheed (who is now a highly recommended writer), suggests February 4, 1967 in Cleveland. This series and others document Kofsky’s experiments with printing techniques.
The Kofsky collection also includes a handful of low-quality pictures of a Coltrane gig at a place where the name "Olatunji" can be read in the background. They are likely from Coltrane’s April 23, 1967 gig at the Olatunji Center in New York, the saxophonist’s next to last performance before his death (according to the indispensable Coltrane Reference) and his last available recording.