JAZZ IN GREENWICH VILLAGE

Priscilla brought up the idea.

My active obsession with jazz had atrophied

I used to go to clubs all the time, Storyville and The Stables in Boston, the Jazz Workshop and Keystone Corner in San Francisco, Catalina and The Baked Potato in Los angeles. and of course the Monterey Jazz festival

But not for a long time. It was Priscilla who brought up the idea.

“I like jazz. maybe we could go somewhere ..we’re in New York…” she said, for the first time in quite a while. We were staying on Christopher Street.

There was a small club near us in the village that I’d heard of - Smalls. Sasha Berliner was there Friday. She’s a Vibraphonist from San Francisco, only 25 years old, but she’s been around a lot. She had just returned from playing Germany.

I emailed Bob Schwartz, a friend since high school who along with being one of the nation’s top education innovators and consultants, is as knowledgable and passionate a jazz fan as I know.

This is what he responded:

“Smalls has a great vibe (no pun intended).  It’s the place where young mainstream musicians get their start.

It’s where Kurt Rosenwinkel and Mark Turner, the two guys whose band sold out most of the week at the Vanguard, were first heard in NYC.

….the New Mainstream.  When we were growing up (in Boston) the Mainstream was the music that emerged from the Swing era, epitomized by players like Coleman Hawkins and Teddy Wilson.  Then along came the be-bop revolution.  Players like Sasha and her band mates have totally internalized the changes wrought by musicians from Bird and Diz through Miles and Rollins and early Coltrane so their music now sounds familiar.  That’s what I mean by the New Mainstream.  You can hear more adventurous music in a couple of other venues around town, but this is the music I love best, especially when it’s played at such a high level …”

So along with our New York friend Terry, we ordered tickets well ahead. It’s a tiny place - only space for 58 people and you have to get in early line. Couple dozen were already waiting outside on the Tenth Street sidewalk.

The stairway can’t possibly be up to code, narrow steps down into the dark of the basement where it took a while for my daylight eyes to adjust and a low ceiling and rows of cane back chairs like, I thought, Mr. Walters’ geometry class in Newton High School

The three of us sat close to the front with a good view and I thought of earlier days at Storyville where there would be a haze of cigarette smoke between the stage and me. Two ten year old kids scampered around killing time before the set.

Sasha walked out and told of her recent tour in Germany. In Berlin she got much give and take about her name. “ Things named after me….”

She jumped right in with a fast tempo song, not the mellow pace of the Modern Jazz Quartet. As Bob said, she seemed not to need the classic melody and progression to improvisation. But then it may be my perception being not up to date.

I can never understand the dexterity necessary to play the vibraphone with two mallets in each hand.

Sasha wore her glasses out on the end of her nose, like Chuck Schumer which added the tension that they were about to fall off.

Most of all , she seemed to really enjoy what she was playing , even the last sone which she introduced with “…this one is very complicated”

The ten year old kids and their mother enjoyed it to the end. So did we.