A Jazzy Week in San Diego

Three jazz events in one week! I'm getting the holidays off to a good start. First there was Jazz in the Park, the monthly event at the San Diego Museum of Art. This group featured Joe LaBarbera on drums, Bill Cunliffe on piano, Tom Warrington, bass and Larry Koonse, guitar. These guys actually are willing to frequently drive down here from LA to perform at the Museum. Joe LaBarbera is practically the house drummer, and a great drummer at that. It's hard to believe that he played with the late, great Bill Evans. His performance exemplified taste and class to the extreme. Bill Cunliffe is one of my favorite pianists. Again taste and class. I'm starting to really dig Tom Warrington's bass playing. He had one solo that blew me away. Larry Koonse, although a good guitarist, didn't leave me with any memorable impresssions. They delved into the Christmas music bag to some extent without pandering to the genre. These monthly concerts are suitable for us old fogeys since they start at 5:30 PM and are over by 7:30. No need to pub crawl to the wee small hours to hear good jazz! It pays to be a San Diegan and live downtown or you'd never be able to get there by 5:30. But at $18.00 a shot (more for non-members) it ain't cheap either. This week took its toll on the old exchequer!

Thursday night I headed down to Anthology, a newly opened jazz (partly) club in Little Italy that represents state of the art technology and 21st century chic. Ahmad Jamal was there, a man that I'd never seen live before and one of the old guard still holding forth in his  seventies. I can go peacefully now since I've heard Ahmad Jamal play Poinciana live! Now I'm telling you Anthology ain't cheap either. Be prepared to part with some bucks when you go there. I sat at the bar and drank Coors Lights at $5.00 a pop. Jeez, I could have gotten a whole case at Costco for what two beers cost  me. But the ambiance is superb. There are HDTV screens everywhere, and the camera man is part of the show. What a priceless experience to see close-ups of Ahmad's hands as they ripple up and down the keyboard. Did I say that a hamburger was $19.00? Ouch!! OK, OK it was a Koby burger. Oh, and the cover was $30.00 just to get in. It was well worth it though. I attended the 7:30 PM show and was home by 9 o'clock. Again perfect for old fogeys pretending to be young, hip and urban.

I could not resist going down to Anthology again Sunday night with my significant other, Judy. The draw was No Cover Charge for the 5:30 PM show featuring the Moutin brothers with Rick Margitza on tenor sax. So we decided to splurge on dinner in lieu of the cover charge. And a great dinner it was. We were attended to very attentively by a myriad of black clad waiters, waitreses, hostesses and maitre d's. Ah, the good life. La dolce vita. But it didn't come cheap! We wined and dined with all the young, hip, urban professionals and the mega gazillionaires fresh off their yachts docked in San Diego Harbor marinas, having parked the van a block away on India street in the commercial parking (yellow) zone. What!! It's perfectly legal after 6 o'clock and we had 20 minutes there as a commercial vehicle anyway. We mingled with the Mercedes and Porsche driving crowd whose master bedroom closets, filled with clothes and dozens of pairs of shoes, are as big as our little studio apartment in downtown San Diego. But then we only had a five minute commute and it took them 30-45 minutes to drive home on vehicle clogged freeways. Ah, the good life!  Little did they know we had arrived in a van with ladders on top. Ohhhh!

But let's talk about the Moutin brothers - Francois on bass and Louis on drums. They are identical twins from France and seemed to have that telepathic empathy and interconnectedness that only twins do. Ahhh! La musique, toute la musique! These guys are really good. Intensity to the max. Pierre de Bethmann is on piano. They're all fantastic musicians. And their ensemble sounds really churned with that big bass swirling on the bottom. They played a long set as we ate dinner, and then packed up their instruments to make way for the next event. It  was all over and we were home by 7:30, another great night out for old fogeys! I figured I had spent about $200. in one week on live jazz in San Diego, but it was worth it. Since we don't go to Panda Express and Coco's any more on a regular basis, we can save up our money and spend it on more high class entertainment once in a while.