Jazz Prints
The prints below have been generously donated to the Jazz Arts Foundation by the artist, Karen LaBach, as a fundraiser for our organization. Please email the Webmaster with any questions about them and, of course, with your offer to purchase one or more.
Click HERE for a PDF with the Jazz Prints photos and descriptions for printing.
The Art of Jazz
by Karen Eugenia Mitchell-LaBach
President Kennedy once coined the phrase, “a nation of immigrants” in tribute to the various races that came here voluntarily or in chains. However, President Obama was simply going for a joke, when discussing his search for a family dog, he referred to “Mutts like me”…Maybe he was on to something – a nation of mutts — because if the melting pot ever came to a boil, the mongrel culture would probably come to the brim.
Purity like virginity is highly overrated, except when we are discussing olive oil. The more we study jazz in the context of its time, the more we embrace other musical cultures. Jazz has always been locked in an embrace with other music. Jazz gives mongrelism its good name, taking what it will from where it will.
Tradition and innovation have never really been at odds in jazz, despite whatever the history books may say. More often, the two forces have been deeply entwined, refining each other in a vital and perpetual exchange.
A famous Jazz player commented to a popular painter, “We are alike — we are both ARTISTS. We are just creating in different mediums.” The musician was African American and the painter was Spanish, but they were both experimenting with new things. In that context, art and jazz have always been connected.
My parents loved jazz, swing, blues and big band. As a small child, I recall the fine sounds of Louie Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Rosemary Clooney, and Charlie Parker. Lena Horne and Cab Calloway put me to sleep, and Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett often woke me up. Jazz was music that made you want to move — and there was always dancing, singing, and a piano playing at our house. It was a noisy place!
I did homework to the melodies of Broadway and a Dixieland band. I loved art and writing, and became a keen observer of what was happening in the world. I noticed that people had very particular tastes in music — and it ran the gauntlet from classical, opera, show tunes, ragtime, rock, blues to country; and often times–musical taste was closely related to their economic status. Jazz always seemed to be the one type of music that appealed to the masses.
In creating the “ART of JAZZ”, I was hoping to find a way to appeal to everyone. In Memphis, a fine, bluesy fellow named B.B. King, told me that Jazz was the only truly American musical creation. We created it and we embrace it — just as we love freedom. The Golden age of Jazz coincided with the great depression, and it seemed to be a sound that made people happy. In the same spirit, I hope the paintings are as much fun to look at as I had making them.
“Sizzling Sax”
SOLD – NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Charlie Parker, (“The Bird”, “Yard Bird”) Charlie “The Bird” Parker is perhaps one of the most famous sax players ever. Much of his eminence was a result of his magnificent improvisational skills. He could churn out notes on his alto with extreme speed. He is very well known for “Yard Bird Suite”, which he wrote. Charlie “Bird” Parker was born on 29 August 1920 in Kansas City, Kansas. This future alto saxophonist would become world famous and be known for his great influence on jazz, especially Bebop.
Artist: Karen LaBach
36 X 30 Giclee print on heavy water color paper with varnish, Value: $352
“Blue Trane” (John Coltrane)
SOLD – NO LONGER AVAILABLE
American jazz saxophonist, bandleader, and composer who exerted an influence on the jazz of the 1960s and 1970s that was at least as strong as Charlie Parker’s had been in the 1940s and 1950s. Coltrane’s tone on the tenor saxophone was huge and dark, with clear definition and full body, even in the high register and with the split-note multi-phonics that became his trademark. The cascade of notes during his powerful solos showed his infatuation with chord progressions, culminating in the virtuoso performance of his difficult “Giant Steps”.
Artist: Karen LaBach
15.5 X 13 (22 X 19.5 framed) Giclee print on heavy water color paper with varnish, Value: $352
“Yellow Violin”
SOLD – NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Stephane Grappelli (26 January 1908 – 1 December 1997) was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. For the first three decades of his career, he was billed using a Gallicized spelling of his last name, Grappelly, reverting to “Grappelli” in 1969. The “Grappelli” spelling is now used almost universally when referring to the violinist – even on reissues of his early work.
Artist: Karen LaBach
13 X 16.5 (19.5 X 23 framed) Giclee print on heavy water color paper with varnish, Value: $352
“Red Drummer”
SOLD – NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Roy Owen Haynes (born March 13, 1925 in the Roxbury section of Boston, Massachusetts) is an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Haynes is one of the most recorded drummers in jazz and in his over 60-year career has played in a wide range of styles ranging from swing and bebop to jazz fusion and avant-garde jazz. He has a highly expressive, personal style (“Snap Crackle” was a nickname given him in the 1950s) and is known to foster a deep engagement in his band mates. One of the few jazz musicians alive today whose roots touch the origins of jazz itself, the drum legend has been “hard swinging” since 1944, when he made his professional debut at the age of seventeen in his native Boston. In the last sixty years, Roy Owen Haynes has shaped some of the most important recordings in Jazz history, transforming the role of the percussionist from timekeeper to front-line collaborator.
Artist: Karen LaBach
15 X 15 (21.5 X 21.5 framed) Giclee print on heavy water color paper with varnish, Value: $352
“Orange Violin”
SOLD – NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Sara Caswell is an award-winning violinist who spent her formative years under the tutelage of internationally-renowned violin teacher, Josef Gingold. She began her violin studies at age 5 and has become a “brilliant world-class violinist…one of the very best of the present generation of emerging young jazz stars,” according to David Baker, music professor at Indiana University and director of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra.
Artist: Karen LaBach
13 X 15.5 (19.5 X 22 framed) Giclee print on heavy water color paper with varnish, Value: $352
“Red Hot and Blue”
(Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie)
SOLD – NO LONGER AVAILABLE
Charlie “The Bird” Parker is perhaps one of the most famous sax players ever. Much of his eminence was a result of his magnificent improvisational skills. He could churn out notes on his alto with extreme speed. He is very well known for “Yard Bird Suite”, which he wrote. Charlie “Bird” Parker was born on 29 August 1920 in Kansas City, Kansas. This future alto saxophonist would become world famous and be known for his great influence on jazz, especially Bebop. Dizzy played about 12 or 13 horn instruments and piano. He was a Union musician, and when a sax player did not show, for whatever reason, Diz would jump in. Later, he focused on the turned up trumpet that he invented. Charlie and Dizzy would later be called the co-founders of Bop.
Artist: Karen LaBach
13 X 15 (20 X 22 framed) Giclee print on heavy water color paper with varnish, Value: $352
Karen Eugenia Mitchell-LaBach
Publications and Advertising:
* Worked for major Thoroughbred Industry publications such as The Thoroughbred Record and The Blood-Horse. Designed and produced both advertising and editorial content for fast-paced weekly’s, as well as hundreds of books and newsletters, produced by both, including Bill Robertson’s History of Thoroughbred Racing and Kent Hollingsworth’s The Great Ones.
* Worked as the Advertising Director of Spendthrift Farm for nine years, during the years that the farm syndicated and stood Triple Crown winners Seattle Slew and Affirmed. Worked directly with John R. Gaines in the formulation stages of the Breeders Cup. Designed and produced all types of promotional and marketing materials for stallions of all price ranges. During this time the farm‘s agency won hundreds of awards from the Lexington Advertising Club including Best of Show.
Education:
BA Art, English Minor, University of Mississippi
2004 American Academy of Equine Art Workshops under James Crow and Booth Malone
2005 American Academy of Equine Art Workshops under Liz Scott and Karen Kasper
2006 AAEA workshop under Booth Malone and Shelley Hunter
2007 AAEA Workshop under C. W. Nave
2008 AAEA Workshops with Liz Scott and Lisa Perry
2009 Created Jazz Series
2010 Created Symphony Series
Volunteer Founder of the Lexington History Museum and volunteer on a regular basis.
