The Grove Street Stompers perform at Arthur’s Tavern (Photos: Tara Yarlagadda)
It’s your typical Monday night at Arthur’s Tavern in Greenwich Village, an eclectic spot on Grove Street that’s been serving jazz fans since the speakeasy days of the 1930s. Portraits of jazz legends hang on the wall amidst Christmas lights and a faded Happy Halloween sign. It’s late June—in case you were wondering.
This week and next, we present a series of longer pieces unraveling the histories of storied buildings.
When Dick Hyman — “a living, breathing encyclopedia of jazz,” per NPR – was a Columbia student, he’d often travel to 7th Avenue and 10th Street in Greenwich Village to catch a glimpse of his heroes playing. Although there were plenty of jazz joints in the neighborhood, the place he loved most was Nick’s Tavern.
W. Eugene Smith, (self-portrait at Loft window). (c) The Heirs of W. Eugene Smith.
“I caught the tail end of when New York was cool,” said a woman waiting in line to watch movies with Shia LaBeouf this morning.
Should she want to relive those days, she might want to forget about #AllMyMovies and catch The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith, showing Friday and Monday as part of the DOC NYC festival. The documentary by Sara Fishko is an offshoot of her “Jazz Loft Radio Series,” a 10-part WNYC production that unboxed the audio recordings that legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith made while sharing his Chelsea loft with some of the jazz greats of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Her new documentary adds a visual element, sharing some of the thousands of photos that Smith took of the loft’s habitués, from Thelonius Monk to Salvador Dali to Warhol’s Ultra Violet, and the street life below.
Now there’s nothing to stop you from living the life of a 1920s libertine. Swing 46, where you can dance to live big band music every single night of the week, returned with a vengeance Thursday when scores of dancers descended on 46th Street to strut their stuff to the tunes of the George Gee Orchestra.
(Still from Ornette: Made in America)
Ornette Coleman was buried in Woodlawn Cemetary a little over a week ago, following a memorial service attended by Pharoah Sanders, Cecil Taylor and other fellow luminaries of avant-garde jazz. But even if his final resting place is in the Bronx, the free-jazz pioneer was very much a creature of downtown. At one point he even owned a Lower East Side school building, and you can watch him amble through it in a documentary that will be shown at Spectacle next week as part of “Something Else: A Celebration of Ornette Coleman on Film.”
Monday
History buffs, take note: Battle Lines is not your ordinary Civil War read. This books is a team effort by graphic novelist Jonathan Fetter-Vorm and award-winning historian Ari Kelman, and it’s sweeping, full-color panoramas combined with Kelman’s nuanced understand of the period provide a whole new perspective on the topic. The authors will talk about the book with acclaimed graphic novelist Josh Neufeld (A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge) accompanied by images from Battle Lines on Greenlight’s big screen.
Monday, May 11 at 7:30 p.m. Greenlight Bookstore, 686 Fulton Street (Fort Greene).
The man sitting next to me at the Black Penny in the French Quarter is very tall, pencil thin, in a black T-shirt and trousers with a skull-and-cross-bones belt buckle. He leans into his Vieux Carre cocktail with his tattoo sleeves propped on the bar, his pin-striped jacket hanging under it. In New Orleans, he could be anybody—a rocker, a random tourist, just a guy. But in barely 24 hours, he’ll be headlining Jazz Fest with a jazz legend and a pop superstar: Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga.
This jazz quartet consisting of Gordon Webster (piano), Nick Russo (banjo/guitar), Jared Engel (bass), and Dennis Lichtman (clarinet) isn’t exactly a well-kept secret anymore (they have two albums), but hearing them perform Prohibition-era jazz at Mona’s, an unassuming East Village spot, feels like a treat every time.
This jazz quartet consisting of Gordon Webster (piano), Nick Russo (banjo/guitar), Jared Engel (bass), and Dennis Lichtman (clarinet) isn’t exactly a well-kept secret anymore (they have two albums), but hearing them perform Prohibition-era jazz at Mona’s, an unassuming East Village spot, feels like a treat every time.
This jazz quartet consisting of Gordon Webster (piano), Nick Russo (banjo/guitar), Jared Engel (bass), and Dennis Lichtman (clarinet) isn’t exactly a well-kept secret anymore (they have two albums), but hearing them perform Prohibition-era jazz at Mona’s, an unassuming East Village spot, feels like a treat every time.