Denver’s jazz scene vibrant
When I discovered one of my favorite singers would be appearing at a Palm Beach hotel cabaret room last spring coinciding with a major birthday, I decided to give myself the perfect present: a VIP dinner-show seat to see jazz vocalist Jane Monheit.
However, I could have saved the cost of airfare, the hotel stay and some retail therapy along tony Worth Avenue, because three months later, Monheit and her swinging trio were booked at Dazzle Jazz in Denver. I went to that show as well. Nowadays, Denver-area jazz junkies don’t have to go very far to get their fix. In fact, I can’t remember when there has been so much exciting music in and around Denver and throughout Colorado.
Of course, Dazzle Jazz — a slightly funky lounge and supper club in Denver’s Capitol Hill — has been a mainstay of the local jazz scene for nearly 20 years. Downbeat magazine has named it among the top 100 jazz clubs in the world. The club not only imports big names, it also features local talent. Good local talent. In some cases, great local talent.
And where else can you go for lunch on a Friday and hear jam sessions with such a polished pianist/vocalist as Ellyn Rucker (she hosts there on the last Friday of the month, while various musicians sit in). Lucky for us, elegant Ellyn also plays gigs elsewhere in Denver.
Other clubs have cropped up in Joey Alexander at the Newport Jazz Fesival on July 30. Eva the last several years, like Nocturne in the River North District and The Crimson Room in Larimer Square, both classy, sophisticated spots that make me feel like I’m in New York.
LaCour Bistro and Art Bar on South Broadway in Denver offers an eclectic mix of music five nights a week, including local treasure Billy Wallace, who’s still playing 88 keys at age 87.
On the west side of town, there are a couple of notable places with regularly scheduled music: the Golden Hotel, where songbird Teresa Carroll holds down the fort with the Clear Creek Jazz Quintet once or twice a month (she, too, performs elsewhere), and Grappa Italian Bistro in Lakewood’s Belmar area, which boasts live jazz twice a week.
Of course, Vail and Telluride are known for their jazz festivals, but closer to home, the 15th annual Evergreen Jazz Festival at the end of July blew me away with nonstop performances in five venues. You could stay in one place and the groups came to you.
As for national headliners, it’s been a stellar summer. In addition to Monheit, I’ve seen guitarist/ singer John Pizzarelli and his dynamite quartet at the cozy Baur’s Listening Lounge (the next day they headed up the hill to appear two nights at Vail Jazz). Wunderkind Joey Alexander, 13, who has been wowing audiences since he was 10, also was at Vail Jazz and then in Aspen. Maybe you remember the little boy with big hands on the piano from an interview on TV’s “60 Minutes.” I can’t wait for his return to Colorado on Sept. 9, when he’ll perform at Boulder’s Chautauqua Auditorium.
And what an electric night it was on Aug. 13 when the don’t-worrybe-happy pianist Monty Alexander, a native of Jamaica, and his Harlem Kingston Express had the throngs groovin’-and-a-movin’ at Balistreri Vineyards north of Denver at the annual fund-raiser for KUVO Radio (another music gem, which I’ve listened to since its inception 31 years ago). Monty (no relation to Joey) and his more subdued trio, with bassist John Clayton and drummer Jeff Hamilton, played at Vail Jazz in early July, and he will return to Dazzle Jazz in November with his Harlem Kingston Express.
With all this jazz, there’s no way Denver can still be considered a cow town.
It’s cool, man, so cool.