Positively Bob Dylan

The free lunchtime concerts of this year’s 12th Annual Oris Spirit of Jazz Concert Series will coincide with an exhibit celebrating the music of Bob Dylan. The exhibition of rare Bob Dylan memorabilia and photographs, including original posters and a selection of original album covers, will be on display at the Tourneau TimeMachine Exhibit Hall on 57th & Madison Avenue in New York from now on through August.

Exhibit hall viewing hours are 10:00 AM-6:00 PM on Mon – Wed; Fri and Sat. 10:00 AM-7:00 PM on Thursdays and from 11:30 AM-5:30 PM on Sundays. The displayed items are provided by ICON Collectibles of Sony Music, who offer original music memorabilia art prints for sale. You can browse many items online and buy them on their website.

The Spirit of Jazz Concert Series is presented by Oris Swiss Watches along with WGBO-Jazz 88. Since 1997, Oris has created a series of Limited Edition watches, each one dedicated to jazz and blues legends. This year Oris honors Bob Dylan with an Oris Limited Edition Timepiece, limited to 3,000 pieces worldwide.

On Monday, March 30, Clinton Heylin – author of the biography “Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades” and “Bob Dylan: The Recording Sessions” – will speak about his new book “Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1963″. The most comprehensive book on Dylan’s song lyrics ever written, including songs that no one has ever heard, is the first of two volumes that tracks the creation of Dylan’s first 300 songs. It will possibly change how Dylan’s lyrics are interpreted and understood. Arranged in a surprising chronology of when each song was actually written rather than when it appeared on albums, it uncovers surprising facts spanning Dylan’s career up prior to Blood on the Tracks. Newly discovered manuscripts, anecdotal evidence, and a seemingly limitless knowledge of every Bob Dylan live performance contribute to this definitive resource.
Heylin’s event will take place on Monday, March 30 at 7pm at Spoonbill & Sugartown, Booksellers (218 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11211). It is free and open to the public. A book signing and Q&A will follow.

Egbert Baqué, founder of the Egbert Baqué Contemporary Art Gallery in Berlin opens the exhibition “A Tribute to Bob Dylan” on March 28. Eleven artists approach the subject in very different ways: through portrait paintings, songs, lyrics, visual elements, related literature or other representations of an era.
Egbert Baqué has always been interested in Bob Dylan. Ever since founding the gallery, every year he has been hosting a Bob Dylan birthday party with a solo concert “Baqué Plays Dylan”. The current exhibition is taking place concurrently with Dylan’s European tour and the release of his new studio album “Together Through Life”, which will be released on April 28. “Eine Hommage an Bob Dylan/A Tribute to Bob Dylan” will be opened until May 24, 2009.

UPDATE FROM MAY 20, 2009:
The exhibition was extended and will now be shown until June 6.

As the Bob Dylan magazine ISIS reports in its latest issue, there will be an exhibition of original paintings and limited edition prints by Bob Dylan from 14 June 2008. The exhibition will include new, previously unseen works. It will take place at London’s Halcyon Gallery in Mayfair, one of Europe’s leading galleries for contemporary art in its 25th anniversary.
Bob Dylan’s interest in painting was probably influenced by artist Suze Rotolo, Bob’s girlfriend in the early 1960s. Examples of his early works can be found on the covers of his albums of “Self Portrait” (1970) and “Planet Waves” (1974), but only recently he agreed to a very first official exhibition at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in Germany from October 2007 until February 2008, entitled “The Drawn Blank Series Watercolor and Gouache Paintings Exhibition”. The initial idea for that came from a book of drawings and sketches done by Dylan from 1989 to 1992, which were published under the title “Drawn Blank” by Random House in 1994. You can read the official press release by Columbia Records here, or take a look at some of the paintings on this page of the Guardian website.