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Kind: News, Opinion Music Genre: Jazz Categories: Music, Arts, Entertainment, New York Published: December 17, 2009

New York Jazz Clubs Balancing for Art and Tourism

By DESIREE QUINONES-TERRENCE

NEW YORK — They have existed in Harlem, on 52nd Street, in West Village, East Village, Brooklyn, you name it. Jazz clubs have always been a part of what New York is. Yet many club owners have throughout the years scratched their heads a second time when trying to figure out how to make their business survive. The enemy number one has been blamed on the astronomical rent, but equally often the difficulty in attracting a walk-in crowd. The lucky ones have succeeded in attracting tourists with tourist budgets. The times of 52nd Street clubs with no cover or a $ 1 cover charge are long gone. For a New York resident, the jazz club is no neighborhood bar after work, it is a choice between an evening at the Met Opera, Carnegie Hall or a Downtown jazz club.

On a regular evening around 8 pm outside the Blue Note jazz club on West 3rd Street in Greenwich Village, a bus full of happening-hungry tourists are waiting to see a world famous musician. The artist hardly lives in New York, but that doesn't matter, they are in New York, now ready to enter the Blue Note. On the contrary, a local band of international fame plays at the Village Vanguard on 7th Avenue at 11th Street. Founded by Max Gordon in 1935, the club is the longest survivor on the jazz club scene today. "The Vanguard" where the subway below accompanies the quiet ballads in this underground space, lives on with the fame built by the legendary artists it has hosted throughout the years. Posters and pictures of legends from John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk to Thad Jones and Bill Evans are affixed on the walls for those who don't believe the many stories passed on by today's musicians. Birdland and The Iridium, located in the Theater district in Midtown, have made a niche for themselves by attracting theatergoers after-hours for a relaxing drink. Birdland, not related to Charlie Parker's original famous club, moved from a struggling existence on the 105th Street on the Upper West Side to 44th Street in the mid 1990s. Previously a hang for local musicians, after the move the club now features traditional programming with big bands early in the week and a crowd-drawing name closer to the weekend. The Iridium made an attempt in the Lincoln Center neighborhood for a while, but settled for more traditional "52nd Street-style" profile in August 2001 by moving to Broadway, corner of 51st Street. The Jazz Standard, now being standardized in the crowd of clubs, experienced a struggling beginning. Founded by James Poulsky in 1998, the club featured a new name in the vicinity of the Indian district on 27th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. After nearly closing for good after a few years, the club has won over both the local and the tourist crowds by offering a clean environment with working stage equipment, and a kitchen which stands far above an excuse to fill the $ 15 set minimum.

Those clubs that didn't make it beyond a few years often featured common dilemmas: Awkward internal architecture and an unfriendly location. The Five Spot was, in spite of its name, a Waldorf Astoria-style ballroom experience inside the Wolcott Hotel on 31st Street close to Fifth Avenue, featuring loud amplification. It simply didn't cater to traditional jazz club expectations. Neither was the few-blocks-below-Macy's location ideal for a late night hang. Dharma on Orchard Street, on the Lower East Side, featured an original-minded stage balcony, making the audience seek for a massage therapist after their evening drinks, not included in the $ 10 cover charge. Similarly, the Metronome, although very different in its appeal, also featured a stage anywhere where it wasn't in the way of the business making a majority of the attendees unaware of the music altogether.

A tourist often describes her concept of a New York jazz club as a smoky and small hole-in-the-wall with a rude bouncer outside. The bouncer is pure fiction, for at least these days jazz club goers can behave. After the smoking ban in 2004, the smoke is also gone for good. But the holes still exist, and some are making it to the tourists' regular stops: Smalls, in the triangular corner of 10th Street, 4th Street and 7th Avenue, has after its closing of the dusty and dark underground space, opened with a renovated, cleaner and thus safer listening environment and now fulfills many tourists' dreams as well as servicing the local scene. 55 Bar on Christopher Street, which features an early set at 7 pm for no cover charge and a main set at 10 pm, is either an empty chapel with a quite live band in the corner, or a Friday afternoon subway car experience with no space to breathe. The East Village clubs – most notably Detour on 13th Street and C Note on 10th Street – were similar in their real estate profile, but had to close due to reasons of difficulty with rent, a location far from a major subway stop and rising advertising cost in local print media, such as the Village Voice and Time Out New York. An ambitious soul with a burning lust to fix things is often a necessity in the difficult jazz business. This was the fate of Bradley's on University Place, with Bradley Cunningham passing away in 1988 (the club closed in 1996), and the Village Gate, which closed its location on Bleecker and Thompson Streets in Greenwich Village in 1993.

The New York jazz clubs will live on, both as a dream for future tourists, a harsh truth for many entrepreneurs, as well as a profitable business for some glossy enterprises, such as the Blue Note. Clubs will come and go, but without its jazz clubs, New York City wouldn't have the nightlife it's known for.

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