Marcel FLEISS : MY JAZZ YEARS
Exhibition Opening
Thursday 5th December 2019
5-9pm
5 - 20 December 2019
Before he started Gallery 1900-2000 with his son David, Marcel Fleiss spent time with some of the leading jazzmen of the 50s.
As a privileged witness of the New York and Paris scenes, in the years 1951 to 1954, he took a large number of photographs, many of which were published in Jazz Hot and other jazz magazines and books.
They were recently presented in Paris at the Librairie Métamorphoses.
For the first time in London, 32 of these photographs have been selected by Marcel Fleiss.
“I was lucky enough to live in New York in the early 50’s, the New York of Jazz. My parents had found a room for me in the house of some friends’, so that I could learn English at the same time as the family fur trade.
So I had the chance to discover the jazz clubs of the time, and to photograph musicians such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner, Billy Taylor, John Lewis, Lester Young, Ella Fitzgerald, Lee Konitz, Stan Getz, Milt Jackson, Art Blakey, Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan”.
'“I was one of the few photographers admitted to Thelonious Monk’s concert at the Salle Pleyel in 1954. Monk was grumpy and taciturn. I invited him to my parents’ apartment with the Renauds, Sacha Distel, Jean-Louis Viale, Jean-Marie Ingrand and some others, to listen to records”.
