With a background in design, Allan Skriloff (b. Queens, New York, 1944) has a magnificent sense of composition. His series of up close portraits of Black New Orleans jazz musicians are remarkable for the way they combine grace with a focused depiction on sustained effort. Many of the artists in Sound Vision chose to focus on the beauty of music, the elegance of the instrument’s form or the emotional resonance of the sounds produced. But Skriloff focuses on the physical act of music making, the sheer energy required to pull from brass instruments trumpets, trombones, and tubas the distinctive sounds of New Orleans jazz. His paintings are exercises in physiognomic distortion. The musicians, nostrils flared and brows pulled low in concentration, suck in the vast quantities of air they will need to expend to make their joyful noises. Skriloff brilliantly catches that moment of silence, just before the great exhale that will produce sound. The artist recognizes the inherent theatricality of this pose, and the instruments, hugged close to the body, and joined at the mouth, become almost biological extensions of the human figures. Here, man and instrument conjoin and operate as single, complex organisms dedicated to making music.