Dirty Dozen Brass Band @ Blue Note Tokyo

This one is more of blog post than a gallery. If you just want the photos, scroll down, but read on if you want to hear how I randomly got hired to shoot a legendary New Orlean’s group 5,580 miles from California – and 6,770 miles from where I started my photography career in Washington, DC.

While on vacation in Japan, we decided to check out Robot Restaurant in Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood. It proved to be a wild combination of robotics, theatre, music and lights with a touch of Las Vegas on acid. After the exciting show, we were finding our way out of the venue and bumped into some other Americans, also reeling from the robo spectacle. Energized, we decided to find a bar or karaoke spot to keep the party going. After a couple drink stops, we ended up at a karaoke joint with a private room, singing Prince and Michael Jackson songs. Along the way we learned that one of us was the FOH sound/tour manager (Alex) and another was the new trombone player (TJ) for the legendary New Orlean’s group, Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Not to mention the bari sax player’s daughter (Maya) who helped a lot with her unexpected Japanese skills.

DDBB was playing Blue Note Tokyo the following night and they invited us to the show, asking if I could bring my camera for a couple quick promo shots. I was traveling with My Canon 6D and a 40mm f/2.8 pancake. It’s a little baby lens, perfect for travel and street photography, not exactly concert photography or headshots, but I made it work.

We were spectators for the first show of the night; happily clapping, dancing and singing along to set a good example for the more reserved Japanese audience. Between sets we went backstage to hang out with the band and plan our lightning fast promo shoot. Since I was on vacation and not planning on shooting anything beside memories and landscapes, I only had my 40mm and a vintage Olympus 24mm manual lens – no Speedlites, no zooms, no reflectors. Our best bet was to use the stage lights, so we quickly reconfigured them, pulled back the dark curtains to show a projection screen (white bg) and I snapped a handful of options while the Japanese venue staff was pressuring us to hurry so they could open the doors for the next show. I think this all went by in 5 minutes.

Immediately after, I took my shots to the tour manager’s laptop and with her no-so-official copy of Photoshop CS4, lacking Adobe Image Raw processing for CR2 files, I speed-edited the JPG file so they could place the new band member in an existing promo comp. It came out much better than I expected.

We could hear the second show of the night starting, so a venue rep escorted me over and told me about the two spots where I could stand to shoot. Only two spots. Both in the way back of the audience. Taking turns with the Japan-based photographer the venue uses, I bounced back and forth from my two official vantage points and attempted to capture some compelling images to document the energetic, funky performance. It was sax player Kevin’s birthday so we celebrated with a beautiful cake afterwards.

Great performers. Great people.