Thelonious Monk and his Town Hall band in rehearsal, February 1959, by W. Eugene Smith, from The Jazz Loft Project, by Sam Stephenson.
But 821 Sixth Avenue was a peculiar place to work. Late at night, the dilapidated building blossomed into a thriving epicenter of the jazz music scene, with underground legends and mainstream greats alike — from Zoot Sims to Bill Evans to the Thelonious Monk — roaming the decaying halls. At the heart of this chaos and glory, Smith’s ambitions for the Pittsburgh project dissolved into his fascination with the loft’s secret life and he redirected his artistic focus towards this newfound inspiration.
(Via Brain Pickings.)
