Articles about Ken
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Ken Koenig is lifelong jazz fan,
particularly jazz on the west coast in the 1950s. Growing up in Tucson during the 1950s, Ken
listened to the Lighthouse All-Stars and other west coast jazz groups on late night radio. At the age of 17, as soon as he got his first car, a 1957 metallic blue Corvette, Ken drove
to California and to the Lighthouse.
In preparation for retirement
from more than 30 years as a psychiatrist/psychoanalyst, Ken decided to make documentary films. He took a class in Digital Media
Production at a local community college, and for his first
project, he made a feature length film about something he knew and loved, The Lighthouse All-stars. His acquaintance
with the musicians who started the Lighthouse and the Lighthouse
All-Stars led him to tell the
behind-the-scenes story of this world renowned jazz
club and the birth of west coast jazz. Ken Burns's recent documentary on Jazz left out much of the
significant history of jazz on the west coast including any mention of the Lighthouse Cafe, the center of the west coast jazz movement.
He hopes this film will stimulate younger jazz fans to become interested
in this era of jazz history.
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