Soon after moving to New York, Mr. Sparks became a session player for Blue Note and Prestige.
Visiting artists such as Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis encouraged him to seek his fortune in New York, and once there he began to record regularly for labels such as Blue Note and Prestige, including dates with Davis and Rollins.
Another significant component of the Rudolf Kurz collection is jazz recordings, here including Verve label recordings with slipcases illustrated by David Stone Martin (who was influenced by the social realist art of the New Deal) as well as Blue Note and Prestige recordings whose cover designs reflected the increased recognition of jazz as a serious, influential art form.
"There was a real herd mentality to get into investment banking," said Ms. Levy, noting that prestige, peer pressure and parents often channeled students to Wall Street.
It doesn't allow the movie to catch on — you need a long exclusive window for that," he said, noting other prestige-film hits took one month or more in theaters before breaking out.
But, it notes, "as the prestige of the producing post increased, the percentage of female participation decreased," both in documentary and narrative filmmaking.
Within the anthropological literature, it has often been noted that high prestige individuals in small-scale societies are listened to more than others, even on topics that have little to do with the domain in which their prestige was earned.
It was defined then by independent labels like Prestige, Blue Note, Riverside, Commodore and Savoy, which pumped out an endless river of the music as it happened.
Of special note next week is a Prestige recital Thursday night at 8 with the young Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov, who this past season won first prize in both the Rubinstein Competition in Israel and the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
"The hopeful note is that the prestige of your doctorate is not your destiny.
