Fishko Files

Despite the persistent rain in New York a few days ago, the usual crowds celebrated New Year's Eve in Times Square, shoulder to shoulder. We are, after all, in this together. When we do things not only together, but in the same key, in the same way, with the same steps, sounds, or movements, it has a particular power. Here is this archival Fishko Files. (Produced in 2010)

Few people in history had as much access to the great midcentury jazz musicians as W. Eugene Smith - born 100 years ago this week, on December 30, 1918. The famous LIFE magazine photographer left his home and family in a New York suburb and moved to a rundown loft building on 6th Avenue, in the heart of Manhattan’s Flower District. As Smith printed in his darkroom there, the likes of Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, and Sonny Rollins came by to jam and hang out - and Smith captured nearly of all it, his quarter-inch tape recorders running nearly nonstop for about eight years. (Produced in 2009)

The Jazz Loft Anthology, a four-part series of hour-long episodes, airs this Tuesday, January 1 at 10 AM on WNYC.

More information about the film The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith is available here.

Thanks to the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, our original partner in the production of The Jazz Loft Radio Series. 

The Jazz Loft Radio Series was supported in part by a grant from The National Endowment for the Humanities; and by an award from The National Endowment for the Arts.

'Tis the season of great music - especially Baroque music. This Fishko Files zooms into an extreme close-up of one of J.S. Bach's most popular and memorable violin pieces. (Produced in 2003)

Robert Frank's The Americans was published in France in 1958, came to America in 1959, and is said to have changed everything for the art of photography. Frank is our guest in this archival edition of Fishko Files. (Produced in 2009)

80 years ago, in 1938, clarinetist and bandleader Artie Shaw recorded an arrangement of the Cole Porter tune "Begun the Beguine," and in an instant it rose to the top of the charts - which, as far as Shaw was concerned, was a very mixed blessing. More, in this archival Fishko Files. (Produced in 2010)

Toward the end of this Leonard Bernstein centennial year, as WNYC's Sara Fishko tells us, there's yet another landmark to celebrate: 75 years since the young Bernstein dazzled the world with his New York Philharmonic conducting debut. To mark the occasion: this archival Fishko Files.

A new photo book out this week, Art Kane: Harlem 1958, celebrates the famous "Jazz in Harlem" photo created 60 years ago. The book features the contact sheets, quotations, and biographies behind the beloved picture, telling its story frame by frame. As WNYC's Sara Fishko tells us, one player in the picture's drama still remembers the day it was made. More, in this episode of Fishko Files.

The book Art Kane: Harlem 1958, is out now from the Wall of Sound Gallery.

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem hosts Kane's son, Jonathan Kane, and one of the 57 musicians in the photo, NEA Jazz Master Benny Golson, on Tuesday, December 4. For tickets and more information, visit the museum's website.

W. Eugene Smith and his prolific, compulsive documentation of the Jazz Loft are chronicled in Sara Fishko's The Jazz Loft Radio Series, from WNYC.

As the new "A Star is Born" continues to hold steady at the box office (#2!), this archival Fishko Files considers the world of movie remakes. As Sara Fishko tells us, they keep on coming - for good or ill. (Produced in 2004)

Since the production of this episode in 2004, director Jonathan Demme has died.

New York-born master filmmaker Alan Pakula died just 20 years ago in an auto accident. Pakula produced "To Kill a Mockingbird" and directed "Sophie's Choice," among many others. As WNYC's Sara Fishko tells us in this edition of Fishko Files, some of his films are not getting old - they're getting new.

Amy Taubin is a film critic and contributing editor for Film Comment and Sight & Sound.

Matt Zoller-Seitz is the Editor-at-Large for RogerEbert.com and a TV critic for New York Magazine.

Historians can't seem to nail down an exact date for the birth of African-American composer Scott Joplin, but they think he was born between 149-150 years ago, probably in November 1868. This Fishko Files invites his biographer Edward Berlin to consider Joplin's life, and offers a taste of his now-celebrated work, from "Maple Leaf Rag" to "Treemonisha." (Produced in 2011)