Jazz at Blackbird

BLACKBIRD ARTIST SERIES
Paul Kahan and Jordan Mozer invite you to an evening of music, fine dining and art as they explore what jazz might look
like and what it might taste like.

Kahan and Mozer are longtime jazz fans whose daily abstract compositional practices are informed by the music. Paul
and Jordan find that indulging in a little synesthesia is a useful part of the creative process employed to imagine an
entrée or entry, an amuse bouche or a building, a pastry or a painting.

Goethe observed that architecture is like frozen music, and music is liquid architecture. Paul and Jordan’s collaboration
present tastes and images inspired by this notion.

After studying painting and sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Jordan Mozer received degrees in
industrial design and architecture. In architecture school Mozer happened upon Goethe’s observation “architecture is
like frozen music” - an idea consistent with synesthetic experiences visualizing jazz; alto saxophone riffs as orange tinted
translucent ripples, a veil through which opaque blue matte drumbeat ovoid forms were sprinkled; high piano notes
pastel crystals…

Mozer began working on the Riff artwork in 1980. These compositions evoke the contradiction of the linear musical
experience unfolding over time but recalled as an emotive object. In architecture we might describe a Renaissance
church façade as having an ABCBA rhythm. Blues song-structure could be described as ABACADA.

While working with George Lucas in the late 1980’s Charlie Trotter introduced Mozer to John Cunin with whom they
developed a truly modern American brasserie, the Cypress Club, serving regional and seasonal food and wine grown in
California but riffed together using a range of hybrid cooking traditions. The design for the new “American” restaurant
was inspired by 1940’s neighborhood taverns, the nearby Beat-era City Lights bookstore and the pudgy Hudson’s, and
juke boxes from the period. The murals envisioned Count Basie’s big band jazz.

The success of the Cypress Club brought a commission to design a jazz club across from Lincoln Center in New York.
Goethe’s quote suggested that perhaps the music from the myriad bands and orchestras at Lincoln Center was fresh
and hadn’t quite frozen yet as it dripped over Broadway. The club was composed as a walk-in riff.

Mozer worked with Mick Jagger designing venues and sets for the The Rolling Stones tour in ’97, proposals which
included an animation program to interpret each of the Stone’s musician’s output in real time.

Bobby Baldwin, president of MGM/Mirage’s City Center holdings is a World Champion poker player and a fan of both
jazz and Jordan’s jazz paintings. Baldwin commissioned a 25-foot long bronze sculpture based on Charlie Parker’s
“Now’s the Time” for Bellagio Resort Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The music paintings and sculptures, like jazz, are composed in-the-moment and fleshed out from spontaneous drawings.
Sculptural elements employ a blend of handwork and digital manufacturing techniques, and are composed of socially
and environmentally sustainable materials, including reclaimed red African ironwood, recycled red-bronze aluminummagnesium
alloys. The metals are poured in West side Chicago foundries, hand-polished and bathed in acid and flames
for patina. The paintings are composed of watercolors, gouache, oils and house paint.

Credits

Exhibit Design: Jordan Mozer & Associates, LTD

JMA Project Team: Jordan Mozer, Jeff Carloss, John Clark