Jazz Loft Project, featuring music of Hall Overton and much more

The story of a little known five-story loft building in New York City’s wholesale flower district that was a popular late-night haunt for some of the biggest names in 1950’s and 60’s jazz is told in "The Jazz Loft Project", a multimedia exhibition from 2010 at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The exhibition featured never-before-displayed vintage black and white prints and rarely heard audio recordings by photographer W. Eugene Smith who spent eight years documenting the jazz musicians, artists, and underground characters who inhabited the scene at 821 Sixth Avenue. Smith’s remarkable photographs evoke the world of smoky jam sessions and after-hours rehearsals with musicians like Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims, and Hall Overton. The Project is being formatted into a documentary film, showing at film festivals around the U.S. Key music in the film includes Sonata for Viola and  Piano by Hall Overton.

Hall Overton, a jazz pianist and ACA composer, wrote the Sonata in 1959 for violist Walter Trampler. The music was first published by ACA in 1960.