A Conversation Between Bentley Brown and New Orleans Jazz Museum Curator David Kunian

Bentley Brown is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and doctoral candidate at The Institute of Fine Arts, NYU and is based in the Bronx, NY and Phoenix, AZ. His research at the Institute explores the pioneering role of Black artists and Black creative spaces within New York City’s contemporary art movements of the late 1960s through the mid-1980s. In his artistic practice, inspired by African American cultural production, abstract and figurative expressionist approaches to the artistic process and the desert landscape of his native Phoenix, Brown uses the mediums of canvas, found objects, photo-collage and film to to explore themes of Black identity, cosmology, and American interculturalism.
David Kunian is the Music Curator for the New Orleans Jazz Museum and Louisiana State Museum. Kunian's career began as a freelance musicologist, producing award-winning documentaries on legendary musicians such as James Booker, Earl King, James Black, and the Dew Drop Inn, as well as writing and producing radio shows on a variety of musical genres.

[@paulgeorge5418]

When I was a young man and a jazz musician living in NYC we spent time at Slugs down in lower Manhattan. All kind of really great Jazz artist would show up and just Jam. Another great jazz place was The Metropole Caffe at 42St and Time Square would have Henry Red Allen and his group (JC Higgenbothim, Buster Baily). I used to sit in with them on many occasions on the first floor and on the second floor you could find Cozy Cole, Buddy Rich and and other jazz greats. I was a great time for jazz.