This report was broadcast on BBC World Service radio in April 2010.

The golden age of jazz has been documented in so many live albums, photographs, films and autobiographies that one could be forgiven for thinking that there’s nothing left to reveal. What’s missing, in most accounts, is the creative dead ends that precede a sudden rush of inspiration – the hours of work that go into making improvisation sound effortless.

A new exhibition at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts offers insights into the midnight ramblings of some of the greatest jazz musicians ever, including Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Zoot Sims, Charles Mingus and Roy Haynes, who were all recorded and photographed by Eugene Smith, as they jammed after hours at his loft.

The building on Sixth Avenue, in the heart of Manhattan’s flower district, was open to all comers, as long as you could play, and for a decade, either side of 1960, it was a place where musical geniuses met after the clubs were closed. Our New York reporter Andrew Purcell interviewed the exhibition’s curator, Sam Stephenson.

Click on the arrow below to hear the report.

To hear much more about the Jazz Loft, follow this link to the WNYC radio series, produced in association with the Centre for Documentary Studies at Duke University.