Travis Shook Trio at Tula’s

Earshot Jazz Festival 2011 presented the Travis Shook Trio at Tula’s last Friday and Saturday nights. this was one of my favorite performances of the festival so far. Travis with Matt Jorgensen (drums) and Essiet Essiet (bass) played some really cool sounding jazz from some standards, to Beetles tunes to his own compositions. Travis – a former Seattleite who was Earshot Golden Ear Award winner for best emerging jazz artist in 1992 and 1993 – gained early notoriety with drum legend Tony Williams, vocalist Betty Carter, and his own brilliant trio releases. Check out the Earshot Jazz Festival Schedule to see what’s next in the last week of the 2011 Festival lineup.

A former Sony/Columbia recording artist, Travis Shook has been called a “man of mystery” by JazzTimes, “pianist-in-exile” by Time Out New York, and he has been highly praised by the likes of Tony Williams and Ahmad Jamal. Shook’s playing demonstrates an unusually wide scope of feeling from the simple to the complex, the conventional to the unconventional, and from the softest, most lush ballads, to the fiercest, hard-driving jazz.

Born in Orville, California, on March 10, 1969, Shook (who began studying the piano at the age of 7) moved to Olympia, Washington, with his parents when he was 10 and spent his adolescent years in the Pacific Northwest. At 18, Shook moved to New Jersey to attend William Paterson College, graduating in 1990 with a BA in jazz performance. He then returned to Washington State and spent three years in the band of veteran bassist Buddy Catlett (famous for his work with Count Basie and Louis Armstrong, among others). In 1993 – the year Shook moved to New York City – Columbia released his self-titled debut album, which boasted the late Tony Williams on drums, Bunky Green on alto sax and Ira Coleman on bass. (But Shook’s association with Columbia turned out to be short-lived. When Columbia’s jazz department went through a major regime change, Shook was dropped from the label along with Horace Silver, Joey DeFrancesco and many others.)

Then in 1994, jazz vocal innovator Betty Carter hired Shook as her pianist, and he ended up touring Europe extensively with her. The future looked promising for Shook, but not long after that European tour concluded, he entered a very dark period of his life and struggled with addiction for a few years, reaching sobriety in the late 1990s with the help of his wife, jazz vocalist Veronica Nunn. In 1999, he and Nunn started their own company, Full Gallop Entertainment, which includes his label, Dead Horse Records. They have released a trilogy of albums on Dead Horse: Nunn’s debut album, American Lullaby; Shook’s second album, Awake; and his third album, Travis Shook Plays Kurt Weill.

Reggie Workman, Eddie Harris, Joe Lovano, Toots Thielemans, Rufus Reid, Chuck Israels, Ernestine Anderson, Branford Marsalis, Benny Golson and Clifford Jordan are among the many jazz greats Shook has played with along the way. He maintains a busy performance schedule in New York, and Earshot Jazz is pleased to welcome him back to Seattle for tonight’s concert. – Danielle Bias from the Earshot Jazz Festival Schedule

Tweet

I had an assignment recently to photograph Marco Abbruzzese, an executive with Wells Fargo Bank. In spite of the fact that we were 40 stories high over Puget Sound, there was no view of Elliot Bay since we were completely fogged in. I had been hoping to use the view of the Bay but instead discovered that I actually like the intense studio quality of the  pure white light coming in through the fog.

<

I love the low intensity light over Puget Sound outside the office window of Dean Bennion, an executive at the Wells Fargo Bank with the Olympic Mountains off hidden in the clouds. Rain was falling over most of the distant mountain skyline except for off in the southern end of the Olympics, the sun was trying to get through under the clouds. A grand vista from 40 floors over Elliot Bay.

Editorial writer Todd Shelton asked me to make a protrait of him for his publications website recently and the weather was great so we shot it outside his Seattle office.

Although the plant is illuminated partly by florescent lighting which gives everything a green cast, I corrected for that. The green cast on the body of the 777 is a protective coat and is removed before it completed and painted. Boeing doubled the size of the Everett factory which is one of the largest buildings in the world, to accommodate production of the 777.

Every time I fly on a Boeing 777, I remember how they look as I saw them on my tour to watch them come together here in Washington State.

Photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan creates photography for editorial publications and corporations and available for commercial photography assignments.

Graphic artist and designer Michael Strassburger co-founder of Seattle Design Studio Modern Dog needed a new head shot and I was tapped for the task. How do you impress a modern dog designer? Not sure but he liked this look made 100% of natural light. It was a little intimidating since Strassburger is one of the powerhouse designers behind Seattle based Modern Dog. “Their heady mix of intuitive design, cheeky humor and punk rock aesthetics has made them unique among design firms, and a hell of a lot of fun. Their work is often seen in the rock poster arena, but they cover a much larger social terrain and their clients include K2 Snowboards, Blue Q, Coca-Cola, Swatch and Nordstrom.

Portrait Photography by Seattle photographer Daniel Sheehan creating portraits for publications and a Seattle Wedding Photographer with an artistic photojournalist style.

Monday night the poet Jorn Ake was in town giving a reading from his latest book at The Elliott Bay Book Company in their new Capital Hill location. it was the first time I had visited Seattle’s legendary independent bookstore new location and was impressed that they very much kept the spirit of the old bookstore in the translation to Capital Hill. I first met Jorn in Prague where he and his wife Claudia were living and I was visiting with my wife Jana. It was good to see them again.
The New York City-based poet Jorn Ake read from his Blue Lynx Prize-winning new collection, Boys Whistling Like Canaries (Eastern Washington University Press). “Boys Whistling Like Canaries is a collection haunted by the grim history of the 20th century, and by how its legacy continues to so troublesomely endure. Ake tackles the most vexing subjects—among them our current wars, the Holocaust, and Cold War totalitarianism—yet he reckons with them without resorting to bromides, polemics, or the benumbing timidity with so often afflicts the work of American poets when they seek to confront injustice. In his rangy and querulous approach, Ake recalled the work of two of our finest poets of social justice, George Oppen and Thomas McGrath. To be linked with them is no small accomplishment.” – David Wojahn. Jorn Ake’s 2001 debut, Asleep in the Lightning Fields, received the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize.
Photograph by Seattle Portrait Photographer Daniel Sheehan specializing in photojournalism, portraits and photography for publications and corporations.

Recently I was working on my archive and I stumbled upon this executive portrait of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer which I shot on assignment for Yahoo Business Magazine. Although he did not give me a ton of time Ballmer was very gracious with me despite what I had heard from others. Coincidently Mocrosoft today announced that driven by Windows 7 sales, their profits grew 35 percent in the 3rd quarter beating all industry analysts estimates. Microsoft had $4.01 billion in profit, or 45 cents a share, on $14.5 billion in sales in the third quarter, which ended March 31. This was an increase of 6 percent compared with the same quarter a year ago, when the company made a profit of $2.98 billion, or 33 cents a share on $13.65 billion in sales.
Ballmer has a long history with the company and joined Microsoft in 1980 and became Microsoft’s 24th employee, the first business manager hired by Bill Gates and was named CEO in January of 2000. Photograph by Seattle Photographer Daniel Sheehan specializing in photojournalism, portraits and photography for publications and corporations, and a wedding photographer, with a candid photojournalist style.