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Jazz salons keep the beat going

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On a Sunday afternoon, a house full of people sat attentively at a cozy A-frame home in the Hollywood Hills. Against a huge window with a breathtaking view of the surrounding canyon and the Los Angeles basin in the distance, the audience heard an informal but passionate jazz performance. Singer Greta Matassa made the trip from Seattle, expressly for this impromptu recital. Teamed with the estimable young rhythm section of pianist Josh Nelson, bassist Hamilton Price and drummer Clayton Cameron, Matassa exulted in the informal freedom of this, one of several ongoing L.A. jazz salons.

Ten years ago, in order to hear live jazz in Southern California, a hierarchy of nightclubs could be considered, as well as a selection of regular concerts, usually at a college or university. Like so much in Los Angeles, all that has changed. Many long-established jazz clubs, such as Culver City’s Jazz Bakery and Spazio in Studio City, have closed. Catalina’s, the gold standard for SoCal jazz venues, now books a fair amount of non-jazz performers. With the club shrinkage, the rise of private jazz salons — mostly in homes — has filled the void somewhat and changed the local jazz dynamic.

The genial and petite Betty Hoover lends her home about once a month to the Jazz at the A-Frame series. She books performers who don’t always appear on the club rosters and attempts to match them with complementary local musicians. As with many of the salons, Hoover provides a fine lunch between sets. On the intermissions, patrons, who pay $40, can mix freely with the artists, adding to the closeness between the two.

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Singer Janis Mann has worked at a number of the L.A. salons and she prefers the format to nightclubs. She finds “the audiences are very focused, and there’s an intimacy that you don’t often find in clubs. From my experience,” she adds, “the acoustics and the sound quality are much better. A special bond seems to develop between the musicians and the audience. Jazz at the A-Frame is one of my very favorites.”

Private-residence jazz in SoCal stretches back at least as far as the 1920s and the rent parties of the Central Avenue area, a common meeting place for homegrown and visiting musicians in that jazz-centric area of Los Angeles. Jazz was just one feature on the menu at a private home off the Avenue known by the cognoscenti as Brothers. For a few years, a cross-dressing man would provide intoxicants and illicit pleasures behind a beaded curtain. Duke Ellington and Art Tatum were just a couple of the players who frequented this after-hours hangout.

After heiress Doris Duke bought the old Rudolph Valentino estate, known as Falcon Lair, from Gloria Swanson in 1953, her home was the site of regular private jam sessions throughout that decade. Her paramour, pianist Joe Castro, gathered the talent and even recorded some of the jams in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Bass giant Oscar Pettiford was moved to record an original titled “The Pendulum at Falcon’s Lair” in 1956.

As jazz clubs flourished in the ‘50s and ‘60s — exemplified by the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach and Shelly’s Manne-Hole in Hollywood — private performances dropped off. The high attrition rate of clubs in the last 20 years has made salons an attractive alternative to clubs and concerts.

When the Jazz Bakery closed a year ago last May, owner Ruth Price was undaunted.

She continued presenting music, at venues all over town. The Grammy Museum immediately reached out to her and offered its stage. Price’s Moveable Feast series has extended the reach of her Bakery policy: giving a forum to worthy musicians who don’t get club bookings. She presents about three times a month, in venues as far apart as the Nate Holden Theatre in mid-city L.A., Zipper Hall at downtown’s Colburn School, the Musicians Institute in Hollywood and the Boston Court Performing Arts Center in Pasadena.

While a new permanent home for the Bakery is expected in 2012, Price produces her shows. “We’ve had some great performances,” she asserts, “but it’s hard to do it at different places because I have to reinvent the wheel every time. I have to rent the piano, sometimes the sound equipment and microphones. Everything takes time and adjusting and there are innumerable details. Even though I did it before, at the old Bakery it was my space, my piano, my equipment — all in one place.”

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Price prides herself on her founding policy of providing space to one-of-a-kind artist combinations, such as the 1999 concert of pianists Roger Kellaway and Dick Hyman. (Their Bakery show was released as “Two Pianos” on the Bakery’s own label.) Still, she concedes that the schedule of three shows a month in different settings can be wearing. “I used to be able to accommodate an artist who said, ‘Hey, can you give me a night?’” she says. “Now, the agents want to book their artists way in advance for a tour. It’s a juggling act that may put me in an early grave.”

Hoover is clear on how the special combustion of attentive audiences and eager musicians make for memorable events. “I have some people,” she says, “who come to every show, no matter who plays. My audience is great; they’re so respectful to the musicians. A pianist told me, ‘There’s just something about the vibe here that makes us want to play.’ It’s most gratifying.”

Hoover began her series after she attended a performance at the home of arts patron Mimi Melnick in the Valley. Melnick has probably been hosting performances of her Double M salon (which convenes roughly once a month) longer than any other latter-day presenters. Unlike most every other series, she doesn’t advertise, nor does she maintain a website.

“It’s word-of-mouth,” Melnick maintains. “I concentrate on the avant garde and present many musicians who aren’t booked into the clubs. I don’t have a great deal of room in my home so if I advertised, I’d be inundated.”

She’s observed something about her audiences, who pay $20: “The groups that draw the best have a horn. The tenor sax seems to epitomize jazz.”

She’s also proud of her business model. “All of the proceeds,” Melnick says, “go to the musicians. I’ve got the house, the piano and the mailing list but I’m one part of the equation. I couldn’t do it without the artists and the audience.”

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David Anderson’s Atelier series is probably the best setting for a jazz salon.

He presents from May to October in his lovely backyard in the Palms area. Under spreading trees, a succession of virtuoso pianists (some classical, but mostly jazz) like Tamir Hendelman and Mike Melvoin play on an exceptional piano. Anderson is a piano technician, restorer and seller and the models his artists play are always spectacular. The sumptuous buffet is a nice touch and the exquisite figurative bronzes by artist Tanya Regir — Mrs. Anderson — that populate the yard add another dimension to the setting.

Anderson operates his salons at a financial loss but insists that it evens out.

“I’ve gotten business from these and Tanya’s gotten lifetime collectors,” he says. “We’re now a nonprofit foundation so we can schedule any artist we want. Past the expenses, any money we make goes to the Art and Music Support Network. It helps families and children struggling with homelessness.”

“This is the ideal setting for pianists,” Anderson declares. “In a club, they have to make do with whatever blowsy model happens to be there. Here, they make love to the best pianos anywhere.”

George Klabin oversees Southern California’s most ambitious jazz salon operation. His Rising Stars Jazz Foundation not only provides a showcase for deserving musicians from all over the world, his Resonance Records has quickly become an important boutique label. CDs by such pianists as Bill Cunliffe and Hendelman have garnered critical raves. Klabin, who has a background in record engineering production, also has a floating operation that alights in different local venues.

Klabin’s sound is uniformly superb, no matter where he presents. He also has filming equipment and documents his shows as a courtesy to his artists to further their careers.

“At the moment,” Klabin states, “I’m hosting less often, though I’ve got a couple of shows coming up in January and February. I’m in a residential area so I have to be respectful of my neighbors. There are logistical complexities but the bottom line is that it’s most gratifying to expose people to passionate, high-level artists. I have a commitment to that and it’s essential that people who love jazz support these efforts.”

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