Dylan Savage was gracious enough to invite me to shoot his set with Gilbert Castellanos's New Latin Jazz Quintet at Dizzy's Saturday evening. Heather was all set to go with me, but she was still getting over a case of the sniffles, which I'm dealing with myself today. I didn't get there in time for their 8pm hit, but I still managed to catch most of the set.





The night was dedicated to recently deceased superstar Freddie Hubbard. While I've got a lot of albums with Freddie's playing on them, Red Clay is the only album I have of his as a leader. Some of my favorites of his as a sideman are Out to Lunch, The Blues and the Abstract Truth, Maiden Voyage, and Free Jazz.



If you have any interest jazz music, check out one of the many permutations of Gilbert's band. He plays a free show at Onyx downtown every Tuesday night, where you can see his band mix it up with local talent in a jam setting.





In order to play in this band, you've got to have chops, obviously, and Dylan Savage has plenty. One thing that amazes me about jazz drumming is how the good players can play around the main beat and still keep the groove going without making it sound random. He played a few solos in unison with the conga player where I could still hear the melody, showing that in jazz, everyone has to read music.

Since he's always sitting behind the drums, I never noticed how tall Dylan is until I shook his hand after the show. He must be 6' 3", although he might have seemed taller due to my nervousness when meeting a great player for the first time in person. I know it's silly, but my photography is helping me to work on that.





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A couple technical notes about shooting at Dizzy's. With a larger group like this, the lighting is not very even across the stage. While the melodious instruments were lit well enough that I could use my slower telephoto lens to do close-ups, the percussion section required at least 2 more stops of exposure, making full group shots a challenge. A lot of B&W conversion and contrast reduction helped.

Since shows at Dizzy's are a seated affair, I had to go to extra lengths to stay inconspicuous. At a rock show, I have no problem shooting from the front of the stage, although the sides work out better for me than standing front and center. I tried to change positions in between songs only and stay seated most of the time in order to not get in anyone's way.

I also made sure to not click the shutter during the quieter passages. There's not a lot of amplification at Dizzy's so, it's possible to hear noise during the music. If you think that a camera shutter isn't loud, try shooting during a solo flugelhorn interlude and you'll see just how loud it really is. My camera has a couple "silent shoot" modes, but they are totally ineffective, in my opinion- they just delay the shutter sound, not eliminate it.

All in all, this is a much better venue to see music than the old location next to the ball park, which was pretty much just an empty warehouse with a stage in the front. This place? Way better.