Sunday, September 26, 2004 Musicians come alive in airport exhibit By Dan Goddard The San Antonio (TX) Express-News Polly Harrison is best known as the guitarist for the jazz combo Small World, but her private passion is taking photographs of other musicians. A child-prodigy violinist, Clive Amor, who died recently, used blurred color effects to convey the cosmic vibrations set off by musicians playing string instruments. The two San Antonio musicians are paired in "Facing the Music," a Fotoseptiembre exhibit on view at the San Antonio International Airport Art Spaces through January. "I've been taking classes for a number of years at the Southwest School of Art & Craft," Harrison said. "What I like is to get musicians in action, portraits of them in performance. I've been taking photographs since high school, but I worked in color at first. Then I got to go into a darkroom, and that made me want to do black-and-white. I work with high-speed 3200 film and no flash." Although she prefers making her own prints, for this show she had 30-by-40-inch digital prints made to fit the new gallery space at the airport. Her portraits focus on the performers in mid-note, when they seem to be transfixed by the music. In the tradition of great jazz photographs, the mood is generally languid and sultry. Guitarist John Pizzarelli, backed up by a bass, stands in the spotlight in one of her best shots, taken at the jazz club Luna. Other guitarists at play include Michael Martin, Guy Forsyth and Trefor Owen. "John is the best seven-string guitar player in the world," Harrison said. "I've known him and his father for years. We're good friends." Small World drummer Kyle Keener is represented with only a pair of hands swishing the brushes across a snare. Local jazz chanteuse Bett Butler wears black sunglasses during a Jazz'SAlive concert two years ago. Piano man Jamie Cullum from England leans back and belts out a song at a New York music conference. Legendary pianist Joe Piscatelle, who died in August, appears to be playing a late night bluesy ballad in a club's murky shadows. Harrison said the portrait was made during one of Piscatelle's last concerts, while he was sitting in with Jay Fort's Nuclear Hamsters at Luna. "At first, I thought it was too dark to print," Harrison said. "But it has a ghostly quality that I really like. I think it really captures Joe's spirit, wearing his little hat and with the light on his shoulder." Another local legend, Sebastian Campesi, shows off his swing violin technique in front of a wine rack at Café Camille. Trumpeter Tom Harrell is blowing hard in a concert at Carmen de la Calle, where Wynton Marsalis also stopped by for a late night jam after appearing in a concert with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra last fall. In contrast to Harrison's stark portraits, Amor's musicians are unrecognizable blurs of color and movement, but his images convey the energy and excitement of something a camera can never catch — musical vibrations. Amor made his debut as a photographer with black-and-white images in last year's Fotoseptiembre, and he was working on this exhibit right up until his death in August. Although you can make out the instruments being played in his photographs, the images are mostly abstract, with streaks and bursts of colors and light in warm, glowing tones. But at their best, you can almost hear the music. A past assistant concertmaster for the San Antonio Symphony, Amor also released three CDs of New Age music, including "Celtic Ayre" and "Trilogy," which features a complex interplay between Amor's 1815 Gagliano violin and electronic synthesizers. Attached Photo: Photos, such as this one by the late Clive Amor, are paired with portraits by Polly Harrison in 'Facing the Music,' a Fotoseptiembre exhibit at the San Antonio International Airport Art Spaces.
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