How did SecondTakeJazzArt begin?

My name is Michael, and I'm a graphic designer by day and a jazz musician on nights and weekends.

During one of my many virtual meetings during COVID, I became preoccupied by the boring blank wall in the background behind me. I thought, "Hmmm....I'm a jazz fan. Maybe there's a poster or something I can hang there."

But what kind of poster would I want? I started out by making a list of some of my favorite live recordings from jazz history: Sinatra and Basie at the Sands in 1966... Duke Ellington at Fargo in 1940... Bird & Diz at Massey Hall in 1953... Coltrane at the Village Vanguard in 1961... etc. A genuine antique gig poster from one of these legendary performances would be amazing.

So I hunted, and I hunted, and I hunted some more. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Other than some blurry, low-resolution scans of a few ads and handbills, I came up empty-handed: no high-quality posters were widely available today for these specific gigs.

And that's when the first punch landed... To commemorate one of these events, a well-made, "authentic-looking" reimagined/recreated gig poster would do nicely. It just needed to get all the nitty-gritty details right and really look the part, to appropriately capture and authentically mimic a contemporaneous advertisement of the same/similar event.

And then the second punch hit me... I CAN MAKE IT MYSELF.

Hell, I can make a bunch. I'm a professional graphic designer with a passion for retro mid-century modern design. I'm an amateur jazz musician who plays baritone and soprano saxophone (http://soundcloud.com/mecreative). And I'm a nerdy armchair "jazz scholar" who loves careful research projects and deep dives into jazz history.

Maybe somebody else would like them, too? And thus, SecondTakeJazzArt was born.

So I started the process of crafting my own high-quality visuals that serve to celebrate and commemorate some of my favorite live jazz recordings. These posters are either wholly new original designs or adaptations derived from vintage art. And in a few cases, I even created upgraded reproductions of low-quality archival posters, now made available for everyone in higher fidelity.

SecondTakeJazzArt is truly a labor of love (after production, shipping, and advertising, I barely break even) — and it's finally allowed me to solve my original problem: five jazz-themed posters now decorate my office walls! (To think, all it took was a global pandemic.)

It warms my heart that my happy customers around the world have these posters hung in their offices, living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, hotels, bars, and restaurants. I really hope you enjoy them, too!

A little more about me...

I was around 8 or 9 when I first discovered my dad's jazz LP collection. The music, the album art, the liner notes... I was instantly hooked.

So I began saxophone lessons over the summer before 3rd Grade, and I started learning how to combine my love of drawing, lettering, and layout by making posters and programs for all our elementary school concerts and plays.

Finding those records some 40 years ago awakened my dual passions for music and art, and that ritual at the turntable — deep listening, looking, and reading — was a transformative experience that continues to profoundly shape my life today. SecondTakeJazzArt is the natural progression in that journey.

Thanks for reading, and take care.