Special photo & video | Carlyle V. Smith's "A Great Day in D.C." captures a closely knit scene -

by Giovanni Russonello
Editorial board

The D.C. jazz world these days is a well-layered, thriving ecosystem, with so many sub-communities feeding inspiration back and forth. From the roots laid by a generation of mid-century jazz stars who are still active, like Butch Warren, Buck Hill and Andrew White (themselves building upon a foundation laid by Duke Ellington, Billy Taylor, Jelly Roll Morton and others), we’ve seen a younger generation grow up to embody the most open-minded approach that jazz has ever ever known.

To celebrate and capture a bit of the scene’s energy, CapitalBop staff photographer Carlyle V. Smith last month assembled a large group of musicians, journalists, presenters and other members of the community for a shot in front of the recently reopened Howard Theatre. Titled “A Great Day in D.C.,” the photograph was partially an homage to the iconic 1958 image “A Great Day in Harlem,” and was catalyzed by the Jazz in Sync Project, which got photographers in five different cities to simultaneously shoot their local jazz scenes on Friday, July 20.

The sky was polluted with gray clouds that afternoon, and rain fell steadily until just before the shoot time of 2 p.m. Minutes before the photo was to be taken, the sky cleared and just the right amount of light sneaked through the clouds and fell onto the Howard.

Watch the making-of video,
by Stefan Immler of GIGANOVA Productions:

“I had been thinking about doing it for some time,” Smith says of the photo. “I thought it would make a really strong statement about the vibrancy of the scene in D.C.” Sure enough, even though plenty of important figures were inevitably missing from the shot (no Buck Hill, for instance, and no Steve Novosel or Tarus Mateen), it does include 41 people from all over the scene’s spectrum. And through smiles and a few stray faces turned away from the camera, it evokes the feeling of fellowship that keeps this city’s jazz world so closely bound.

That feeling is especially clear in the beautiful making-of video that you can view above. It was filmed and produced by Stefan Immler of GIGANOVA Productions, which recently released Oxygen for the Ears, a feature documentary on D.C. jazz that Smith says helped inspire him to organize the photograph.

Following is a full list, left-to-right, of everyone pictured in “A Great Day in D.C.” David Cole, Matvei Sigalov, Michael Price, Dwayne Adell, Janel Leppin, Brent Birckhead, Anthony Pirog, Marshall Keys, Eliot Seppa, Greg Boyer, Butch Warren, Allen Jones, [unidentified], Brad Linde, Shannon Gunn, Sarah Hughes, Brandon Combs, Brian Settles, Luke Stewart, Aaron Martin, Jessica Boykin-Settles, Michael J. West, Emy Tseng, Mike Janssen, Davey Yarborough, Art Cobb, Andrew White, Esther Williams, Peter Frassrand, Fred Foss, Russell Carter, [unidentified], Shirletta Settles, Carl McIntyre, Tony Haywood, Adrienne-Michelle Collins, Giovanni Russonello, Elijah Jamal Balbed, Ola Cole Laryea, Aaron Seeber, Jehangir Dalal.