Live Concert Photography: CMJ 2015

Live Concert Photography: CMJ 2015

I’ve been adhering to social distancing guidelines and quarantines as much as humanly possible over the past five-and-a-half months. I’ve mentioned this countless times before but my time in the outside world has been fairly limited: most of the time, it’s for errands — the supermarket, the pharmacy, the post office and the occasional walk for exercise and photos. And thanks to outdoor dining and drinking, I’ve gone out for drinks and meals here and there. But for the most part, most of my time has been focused on work.

Over the course of this site’s ten year history, I’ve managed to develop a deep archive of unedited photos. Throughout much of this site’s history, I’ve balanced my work with JOVM with working full-time, corporate jobs in book publishing as an Editorial Assistant and Acquisitions Editor. So my daily life involved at least two hours of commuting back and forth a day; eight hours of work a day; then commuting to a show maybe three or four days a week depending on the week and what I had going on for work. Add actually working on the blog and maybe occasionally wanting a social and romantic life and sometimes there just wasn’t enough time in my day to do everything I needed or wanted to do. Because of COVID-19 lockdowns and limited options, I have nothing but time, so there are a lot of late night photo editing sessions.

Sadly, much of this work going through photos has managed to be an uncomfortable reminder of the some of the things I’ve loved so much — and won’t get back for the foreseeable future, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fucking idiots, who won’t put something on their goddamn faces. So one more time, in case you didn’t understand: PUT SOMETHING OVER YOUR FUCKING FACE WHEN YOU GO OUTSIDE TO PREVENT THE SPREAD OF COVID-19!

As I was going through my hard drives and my files, I came across previously unedited photos that I had taken at 2015’s CMJ Festival. If I’m not mistaken, that year’s CMJ was one of the last CMJ Festivals before they suddenly shut down. These photos are so old that some of the venues sadly no longer exist. Sigh. Such is less. Check out photos from that year’s CMJ below.

BRIC Jazz Fest CMJ Showcase at BRIC House 10/16/15 feat. Dr. Lonnie Smith’s Evolution feat. Alicia Olatuja and Nate Smith and Kinfolk: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmQcUAE4