New Orleans Jazz

Every so often life hands you a travel gift. Something unexpected or completely unplanned or relatively inexpensive but always way, way too tempting to pass up for some reason. Maybe it's a destination wedding. Or a family member (or a friend) springs for a vacay. Or it could be a work trip either for a project or client or just a conference or something (and yes, work trips can have some fun tacked on every now and then). Whatever it may be, it's a bonus surprise. And you take it gladly.

Why start this post the way I did? Well, obviously because this year I got one of those unexpected surprises. And yes, it was a work trip. New Orleans. Late April and early May. But it wasn't MY work trip. It was my wife's. And this is the kind of work travel I can get into. No happy hours with colleagues or clients. No late dinners with your boss or bosses. Just get your work done remote (because I did log 8 hours each day) in the hotel and quit right on time and start exploring. And New Orleans is a place worth some exploring. 

Now, my wife did tell me before we left that she wasn't going to be able to pay attention to me during the day or even after hours on a couple of nights. I think I'm good, honey. I'm going to a bar and drinking some beer and listening to some music. And if it's the Big Easy, that music is jazz. Let's explore!

So I know what you might be thinking...isn't jazz dead? Or at least on life support? Well, without getting too Timotheé Chalamet about something...maybe. But not everywhere. Not in New York certainly, where you can visit a different world-class jazz club every night of the week. And definitely, defintiely not in New Orleans. Alive and well doesn't come close to describing the status jazz in the Big Easy. Thriving would be better.

Most people regard New Orleans as the birthplace of jazz. It's a tricky thing to ascribe the origin of any particular art form to a specific time and place but in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a style of music emerged in the Crescent City that borrowed from African, Creole, Caribbean and various European music forms. This new type of music based in rhythm and syncopation with improvisation as a key component of its character borrowed heavily from southern blues, ragtime and African call and response music. It was unique. And it worked. It stuck!

New Orleans was likely the only place on the planet where this sort of music could develop. We often think of the United States as a melting pot but that's not really true in most places. We are a heavily segregated society even today, let alone in the late 1800s. But New Orleans was an exception. Its status as a port town on the Gulf of Mexico combined with its relatively loose attitude toward separation of races brought cultural influences, instruments and people together who wouldn't normally have any opportunity to intermingle. And out of all that came jazz.

Let's not get too confused about this subject. Jazz today and over the last century is and has been complex. It has spread across the country and the world and has been interpreted and added to and mutated in ways very different from what was created in the Big Easy 120 plus years ago. Big band swing, jazz manouche, be bop, hard bop and all sorts of other forms of jazz were created in places other than Louisiana. But it all got started in New Orleans. And it is very alive there today.

I am not a huge jazz guy. But my dad is (or was) and there is a legacy of jazz in my family that is passed down from my him to me. Now, truthfully, I've been a reluctant adopter of jazz in my life. While there have been times before my 50s that I engaged with this form of music in a couple of visits to New Orleans and the odd CD purchase over the years, it was really relatively recently that I could actually sit down at home and listen to a whole jazz album and enjoy it. And ironically, it was when my dad started losing interest in everything (including jazz) that I adopted part of his collection and consciously started listening to this / his music. 

I've documented more of my relationship with this kind of music and my dad in a prior post. I won't re-hash that same thing here. But suffice it to say, I felt much more prepared to like or love the music I would be hearing in New Orleans in 2026 that on prior trips. I also wanted to explore some New Orleans jazz history on this trip, rather than just camping out in some club every night I was in town. I wanted to connect the dots of history around this music.

If there's a place to start exploring the history of jazz in New Orleans, it's at the New Orleans Jazz Museum near the Mississippi River at the west end of the French Quarter. Now truth be told, I didn't start my 2026 jazz voyage here. I planned to make my way to the Museum on Saturday morning and I'd been in New Orleans since Tuesday night and there was no way I was letting all those nights in town pass without hearing some live music. So Saturday it was, with two shows under my belt already.

The New Orleans Jazz Museum is in the old United States Mint and it shares the building's exhibit space with displays and information about the Mint itself. It's not an hours long experience. I read about every word in the place and it took me a bit more than an hour or so. And sure, it included all the stuff that I wrote above about New Orleans being the perfect place for different muscical forms to collide and emerge as early jazz.

But it also told an older story about the origin of jazz in the Crescent City. One that I didn't fully understand until I got to the Museum. And like some tales like this, the uniqueness of New Orleans as a site for jazz to begin is in some part rooted in laws and rules that ultimately make little sense. But they led to something magical.

The economy of French colonial Louisiana, like every other place in the southeastern part of what is now the United States, depended on slave labor, African people torn away from their homes and families and involuntarily transported to the United States to be forced to work against their will (that is, if they even survived the journey). But unlike the American southern states at that time, French colonial Louisiana prohibited slaves working on Sundays and holidays. And for some reason, slave owners allowed their slaves to leave their properties on these days and congregate together. One of the places where they did that was Congo Square, where enslaved African peoples (among other things) created music. This was the first root of jazz in New Orleans. And it started as early as the 1780s, about 100 years before the generally acknowledged emergence of jazz.

Congo Square, Louis Armstrong Park, New Orleans.

If I got nothing else out of the Jazz Museum, understanding the historical connection to Congo Square was important, particularly because that was my first stop after the Museum. But being in a museum about jazz in New Orleans is only going to get you so far. There is a display with the following text on the first floor of the Museum. 

The jazz that you hear in...the clubs all over New Orleans may feature musicians of the present but it shares the syncopated rhythms, blues patterns, improvisatory prowess, spiritual depth, and breathtaking technique that echo more than a century of music in the Crescent City. These artists connect the jazz they play to their lives and the current world, just as Bolden and Jelly Roll did in their era. The best way to appreciate and honor the luminaries of the past is to seek out and patronize today's virtuosos as they continue playing and developing this music. Jazz is a living and changing art, and it thrives both within and right outside these doors.

Well said. Time to hit some clubs. Let's start with Preservation Hall, which is not where I actually started listening to live music on this trip. But from a narrative perspective, Preservation Hall is a good place to start.

It seems to me that there is a need to keep the history of jazz from a performance standpoint front and center in New Orleans. I mean this is where it started, after all. And I assume others feel that same way and that's why Preservation Hall exists. The place was founded as a performance hall in 1961 and has been carrying the torch for traditional, New Orleans jazz ever since. It's a dusty, grimy-looking, basic building on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter which hosts multiple performances of jazz on a nightly basis. 

The line outside Preservation Hall.

If you want to hear musicians every night that push the edge of their craft and are that making music that is breaking ground or super creative, Preservation Hall is not likely the place to do that. The music presented to us the night I visited was not current and I imagine most shows in that building are the same way. We heard music created by or played by (or both) Duke Ellington, Al Hirt, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Benny Goodman and others. None of those men in the prior sentence were either born less than 100 years ago or were alive in the 21st century. It’s sort of an oldies show, with the exception of Caroline Brunious’ original composition called Spooky.

Don’t misunderstand me, there’s nothing wrong with skilled musicians playing timeless classics. The 45 minute long experience is essential New Orleans and it was enjoyable. The whole mission of Preservation Hall is historical and deliberately created just that way, right down to the building where the musicians play. I mean there is no reason for Preservation Hall to look as old and run down as it looks. And it’s really not old and run down, it’s just made to look that way. It’s part of the act. It’s a stage set. Or a museum, if you prefer. And there’s a lot of value in preserving New Orleans’ history and presenting it to audiences every night.  

I had visited Preservation Hall on my first trip to New Orleans, which I would put at about 14 years ago (going from memory). I think going once a decade and a half is about the right pace. I assume the show here is going to be basically the same every night. It has its place and it's super valuable as a preserver of tradition.

Wendell Brunious at Preservation Hall talking to the audience at the end of the show.

We were in town in New Orleans this year for five nights, including the first night when we got to the hotel at about 8 or 9 p.m. I heard and saw live music on three of the five (but really four) nights. I thought that was pretty good. Preservation Hall was the only show I saw in the French Quarter. The best jazz in the city can be found elsewhere.

My intent on this trip was to make this a true New Orleans music week / weekend. I fully intended to find a New Orleans piano show and hear some zydeco to go with my Preservation Hall pilgrimage. If you didn't know it, the Crescent City has a long tradition of piano jazz. From Jelly Roll Morton to Alain Toussaint to Fats Domino to Professor Longhair to Dr. John to James Booker to Harry Connick, Jr. And I was set up to a solo piano show at the Maple Leaf Bar on Thursday night, the very place where James Booker used to be the house pianist. In fact the piano series on Thursday nights at the Maple Leaf is named in Booker's honor.

So Preservation Hall on Wednesday, Maple Leaf Bar on Thursday and I did manage to find a zydeco show at dba New Orleans on Frenchmen Street just east of the French Quarter. And not just some zydeco show...Rockin' Dopsie Jr. (somehow pronounced Doopsie) and the Zydeco Twisters on Saturday night. This is the same band (minus Dopsie Jr.'s father) that played on Paul Simon's Graceland album and a connection back to the legendary Clifton Chenier (and the King of the Bayou).

Zydeco by the way is an accordion-based music invented by French-speaking black Creoles in Louisiana and it hasn't really spread much further than its point of origin. In addition to the accordion as the main instrument in the band, it is not uncommon for someone on stage to be wearing a washboard on his or her chest which is played with spoons or some other metal device.

My music agenda was all set up.

And then I strayed.

Rockin' Dopsie Jr. and the Zydeco Twisters. dba New Orleans.

Before the Maple Leaf announced the Wednesday James Booker-themed show the week I was there, they posted an electric organ show on their schedule page on Thursday night. And it is about impossible for me to resist an electric organ as the centerpiece of a show. Look, we all have our vices and weaknesses in life. Electric organ is one of mine. So I faltered, turned my back on the piano show and bought a ticket for Wednesday instead of Thursday (which pushed Preservation Hall to Thursday). I like what I like.

Most music clubs in New Orleans are small and have about zero seats. Maybe they have some benches on the side of the main hall, which is sometimes little wider than a large corridor. I'm not talking about seated jazz clubs that serve dinner. I mean straight ahead music venues.

Both Maple Leaf Bar and dba fit this mold. They pack as many paying customers as possible into the place for a show who all eventually at some point make their way as close to the stage as absolutely possible. It's electric and it's loud and it's fun to be that close to the band making this incredible music. That is until it gets really hot from being in a mob of people really close to you in a place that can't actually have adequate ventilation for that situation. And inevitably either someone taller than you ends up standing directly in front of you or someone whose personal assessment of their ability to dance does the same thing as the taller person mentioned earlier in this sentence.

I'm not really complaining here (although it could easily be interpreted that way) but the dude who started out to my right at Maple Leaf but ended up with the back of his head about 12 inches from my face before he started bopping his head and shoulders back and forth and the women who both jumped right in front of me at dba and who both stepped on my foot (which hadn't moved) while "dancing", give me some personal space please. I lasted 45 minutes to an hour at the front of each show before retreating to the back. It was cooler in the back.

Joe Ashlar (organ) and Stanton Moore (drums), Maple Leaf Bar.

Both shows were fantastic. I'd go back and see either of these two bands perform any day. Could I complain about the covers a little bit? Sure I could. I didn't really need to hear Chris Stapleton's Tennessee Whiskey at the Rockin' Dopsie, Jr. show. I was there to hear original music from musicians trying to create music that is serious and which honors musical traditions created in New Orleans and elsewhere. The covers at both shows were mostly just a distraction from what I really wanted to hear. There was plenty of original music and I heard enough of what I wanted to go home happy both nights.

Was it jazz? I don't know. Neither show likely fits strict definitions of what jazz is to most people. I would think most people would be looking for some horns when they think jazz and there were none of these at least in the organ show that Joe Ashlar and Stanton Moore (with guests) at the Maple Leaf. But both shows had music with syncopated rhythms, blues patterns, improvisatory prowess, spirtual depth and breathtaking technique which is what the New Orleans Jazz Museum said makes up jazz. And for real, free-soloing around a consistent beat and rhythm was the foundation of both shows (except maybe for the Tennessee Whiskey cover).

And if you need any further proof on the Maple Leaf show being jazz, Stanton Moore's picture is actually in the New Orleans Jazz Museum.

Pictures of James Booker at the Maple Leaf Bar. Booker was a New Orleans original.

The first two times I visited New Orleans, I winged it with the music a little bit to a lot bit. I expected that I would be able to hear what I regarded as jazz (and, yes, I likely would have described it as something with horns) anywhere I turned. If there is any doubt about me winging it, let me say that on both prior trips I looked for some good jazz on Bourbon Street (apologies a little to Fritzel's for making that statement). Who seriously does that? I came away in 2012 and 2015, feeling that my New Orleans musical experience was lacking despite stumbling onto a pretty good blues show on Frenchmen Street the first time I was in town.

This time I did it right. I did a little bit of research on where to find the best music, checked out the artists on Youtube where I could to get excited about some and reject others and then made sure I had some tickets in advance of the shows. Does that kill the spontaneity a bit? Sure it does. But I wanted some music this time that aligned with what I love. And if I needed spontaneity, I had Friday night open for that if my first two nights turned out to be failures. I didn't go to a show on Friday.

Honestly, where else in the United States are you really going to be able to find this amount of music on any given week of the year and come away satisfied with three different shows? New Orleans' music scene truly is a national treasure, particularly for a city of its size. I could easily make an argument that New York City can offer the same sort of variety and quality but the population of Manhattan alone is five times the size of New Orleans. This much music in a small city is worth traveling to see and hear.

I didn't have New Orleans on my radar for 2026 so it was great that it worked out successfully. We concert-go here at home the entire calendar year when bands and artists that we love come into the DC area. We likely make it to 8-12 shows a year, which i know is not a huge number but it's a lot more than a lot of other people I know (not judging, just saying...). This trip to the Big Easy flipped my concert experience on its head. For four nights, I had to discover something that I liked over some dates that I had no control over selecting. It's a testament to the quality of music in New Orleans that I could do it and do it easily. I actually had backup shows on two of the nights. This was a huge success.

And one other thing...you can find James Booker music on CD way, way easier in New Orleans than you can find it at home. Or even on the internet. I came home with one to add to my collection.

Next trip: intentional travel on a trip we've been planning for months. Just like always.

Last pics: Stanton Moore drumming (top) and Rockin' Dopsie Jr. and his brother Anthony (on accordion).

New York Hot

This post is about visiting a couple of jazz clubs in New York City over the fourth of July weekend this year. 

Actually, that's not true. It's not really about that at all. Yes, this post appears to be about visiting a couple of jazz clubs in New York City over the fourth of July weekend this year, but it's not. It's really about my dad. And me chasing him.

For as long as I can remember, I've had jazz in my life. My dad was (and is) fanatical about jazz. It's one of his many life's passions and loves. I can remember on weekends when we were kids growing up in England, every time the record player was on in our living room, jazz was pouring out of the speakers. Sounds cool, right? Awesome to have such a hip dad? I mean how with it is my dad to have jazz playing all the time?

I didn't like it. I mean, I really, really didn't like it. It was loud, it was discordant (I would not have used that word as a kid) and there were no words. How could you listen to an entire record with no words? And then another. And another. This is what I grew up with. I didn't appreciate it. I didn't want it. But it was there. I spent time hearing it at home. My dad received magazines about jazz. I spent time in record stores with my dad in London and Birmingham as he looked through piles of albums for hours. It was always there. Jazz, jazz, jazz! I didn't get it. At. All.

Eventually, my dad's love of music made its way to me. But it wasn't jazz. My favorite artist when I was a pre-teen was Billy Joel, and that wasn't really cool at all back in those years. But I started getting into music a little more broadly in a semi-serious way when I was a freshman in high school. Then I started buying records (yes...records) in about 1983. Def Leppard's Pyromania started it for me, but I moved on pretty quickly to other things. Duran Duran. Spandau Ballet. INXS. Genesis. The Moody Blues. Marillion (so much Marillion; like a ton!). Pink Floyd. The Beatles. Bob Dylan. David Bowie. Linda Ronstadt. Motown. Cowboy Junkies. Mark Knopfler. Brandi Carlile. Taylor Swift. There were and are many more in there. Too many to list. 

I believe my dad is at least in large part responsible for my love of music. It is also one of my many life's passions and loves and I give huge credit to my dad here. I can't tell you how many dollar or two dollar used records my dad helped me out with at Integrity 'N Music in Wethersfield, CT.

I figured one day I'd meet my dad a little musically and get into jazz, but honestly it never really happened. Whatever rock or pop music or whatever you want to label it is, I love most or all of that. My interest in all sorts of that type of music has led me to the blues, which I also love. And I do mean LOVE! Classical? Country? Rap? Easy listening? A little bit (very little bit) of opera? Sure, sure, sure, sure and sure. All of it. Well, like old country. And only a little rap. But not jazz. Not on records. I've intentionally visited New Orleans and listened to jazz in clubs and liked it. But sitting down, putting on a record or CD and listening to it at home...that's different. I never got into it. I tried, I swear. Didn't happen. I knew one day I'd be inheriting an amazing jazz collection (which I'd already pledged to honor and take care of) but I just couldn't get into it.

Then one day last fall, I got to a tipping point. My mom told me she and my dad had decided to sell my dad's jazz record collection. Not the CDs. Just the records. 

Hold on! Hold on just one second.

I wanted some. 

This music is an important part of my childhood, even though the irony of my complete rejection of this music is front and center with my objection here. So, while I was over at my parents' place one weekend a couple of weeks after my mother's pronouncement, I asked my dad if he would pull out a curated assortment of the very best jazz records ever made from his collection. He couldn't do it. Couldn't recall enough about individual works to pass along the best in his collection to me. My dad's memory is failing. It's a problem. It's frustrating for him and it breaks my heart. And not just because he couldn't pull out his favorite jazz of all time.

Lacking my dad's input, I sort of tried to do it for myself that weekend. I did a quick search on the internet for the best jazz albums ever made, found some (like honestly just five or six) in his collection and came home and started playing them. John Coltrane. Charles Mingus. Art Blakey. Miles Davis. One or two from each plus a Howlin' Wolf record. And while I played them, I continued to look online and make a list so that the next time I visited my parents, I could look properly and find what I was sure would be an instant legit classic jazz collection.

Some of what used to be in my dad's record collection.

The names on that list I made...Duke Ellington. Charlie Parker. Sonny Rollins. Grant Green. Kenny Burrell. Wayne Shorter. Eric Dolphy. Freddie Hubbard. Herbie Hancock. Dexter Gordon. Thelonious Monk. Count Basie. Lee Morgan. Django Reinhart. Cannonball Adderly. More Art Blakey. More John Coltrane. More Miles Davis. These were all names from my childhood. I knew them all. I just didn't know anything about any of them and I never listened to their music. 

The next time I visited my parents, I found most of what I was looking for in one single spot in my dad's bedroom closet. Most everything on the list I had made was recorded on Blue Note Records and my dad had all of them together in one giant treasure trove of a find. Now is not the time and place to talk extensively about my dad's record filing habits but he used to organize his music collection by label, not artist. He's mostly changed that now but it makes sense given his history that I would find all the classics in one location. They were all on the same label (Blue Note).

Since I found that stash, I've been slowly working my way through that collection. It's difficult to get used to a sizeable collection of music that is totally new but I've been doing it one by one. I definitely have favorites and some that I love. I also haven't even gotten to some of it and I also can't stand some of it and I swear it's not scars from my childhood. 

It helps that they are vinyl. There's something about dropping that needle down onto the wax and hearing the same pops and clicks sometimes that my dad used to hear. I feel like vinyl's the right medium for this music. It just feels appropriate.

Photos on the wall of The Village Vanguard.

As far as I was concerned when I was a young kid, my dad's love of jazz was confined to our home. I'm sure that's the limit of my childhood memory kicking in. I'm sure he went to listen to jazz live in England and I know he had a jazz club he used to go to every so often in Connecticut near where we lived. But eventually, he started to travel to listen to jazz in the places where men and women made it famous. I remember him taking a couple of trips to New Orleans with my mom, including one where they drove to the Crescent City all the way down from Memphis. On that trip, they visited Sun Studio where my mom literally bumped into Carl Perkins and stepped on his shoes.

The other jazz trips I remember my dad taking were to New York City. He had a lifelong friend and fellow jazz fan who used to visit us here in the States and the two of them used to head down to the City for a long weekend for what seemed to me like several years in a row but was likely really just two or three. They'd grab a hotel room, spend each night jazz club hopping until 2 a.m. or whatever in the morning, crash until late the next morning and then do the same thing over and over again. Birdland. Blue Note. The Village Vanguard. Some others probably that I don't even know about and which my dad cannot remember.

One day I thought it would be great if I could have taken my dad back to some of those places but I know enough to know that he's never going to be jazz club hopping in New York ever again. But I thought now that I have a portion of his old jazz record collection, I could do it without him. I've followed the memory of Gerry Rafferty to a pub in London and visited a hotel in Alabama where The Rolling Stones once stayed and had a late night snack in one of Ernest Hemingway's favorite restaurants in Madrid. Why shouldn't I now do the same thing and follow in my dad's footsteps to one or two jazz clubs? He's had way more influence on the person that I am today than Hemingway, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards or Gerry Rafferty. A three night trip to NYC seemed to be the perfect time to start following my dad to jazz clubs.

The Ravi Coltrane Quartet. Birdland. New York City.

I focused my jazz club search in New York on six places: Birdland, Blue Note, Dizzy's Club, Smalls, The Village Vanguard and Zinc Bar. From there, we picked where we were going mostly, but not entirely, based on who was playing, although our choices turned out to be somewhat limited on Monday night, July 3, when most were closed.

There is some real jazz history in some of these places and some of these names. Sure, Smalls has only been open since 1994 and Dizzy's Club is even younger (despite borrowing jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie's name) and Blue Note was opened in the early 1980s. But Zinc Bar is in the same space that used to be called Club Cinderella where Thelonious Monk worked as the house pianist in the 1940s and the Birdland club is one of the most legendary jazz spots named after Charlie Parker and opened way back in 1949 (although admittedly, the current location is the third iteration of the club and there was no Birdland at all from 1964 to 1986). Of all the places on my list, The Village Vanguard is the boss; it's been in the same location since 1934. And pretty much everyone who is anyone in jazz has a live album recorded at the Vanguard.

We picked Birdland and The Village Vanguard. For the artists. For the history. And because I know my dad has sat in both spots listening to jazz and being happy. 

Before we get into my very brief synopsis of our experience at each place, let me just say what an amazing place that New York is. I've said this many a time but if I could afford to live in Manhattan and maintain my current lifestyle that I enjoy living here in northern Virginia, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I love this city. I was very selective with my choice of clubs to visit but where else on this planet can you find the number of jazz clubs that there are in New York. I've listened to jazz in other cities in the world including New Orleans, Paris and Brussels but for the amount of top quality music every night, New York is the best. This doesn't just apply to jazz clubs. Like everything about New York is the best. LOVE it.

We ended up seeing the early show of the Ravi Coltrane Quartet at Birdland on Saturday night and the late show of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at The Village Vanguard on Monday night. From a music perspective, I enjoyed Ravi Coltrane (who yes, is the son of John Coltrane) way more than the VJO. Coltrane is leading a band of professional musicians who are making a living playing jazz and making records that are creative and original. They are also (from my limited jazz knowledge acquired in the last nine months or so) playing music pretty close to the 1950s and 1960s stuff I've been predominantly listening to since I pillaged my dad's record collection. The VJO is a big band and the big band era is long gone. That's not to say there's no value in that kind of music or that it wasn't entertaining; just that given a choice one night to see one or the other, I'm picking the quartet.

Venue-wise, they both had their own appeal. When you step off 44th Street and into Birdland, it's like you are a million miles away from the New York City sidewalk with just one step while still very definitely being in New York. There is no doubt you are in an historic jazz club. I'd go back to Birdland any time, particularly if we could get seated in the front row like we were last month (it's first come, first served seating and you know I was early).

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, just before they started playing (no pics once the music starts).

But it is difficult to replicate the atmosphere of the Vanguard. It's a basement space which you access through a pair of doors probably 4' or maybe 4'-6" wide between the two doors and down a staircase which I feel fairly certain doesn't meet today's building codes. But it's a magical space. It's dark. It's old without being smelly. And the triangular floor plan focuses all the attention on the small stage and the south end of the joint. We were packed in there like some kind of puzzle pieces making up some kind of larger, glorious bigger picture. You can feel the history in that place, even without the faces in the pictures on the wall looking back at you (Birdland has similar walls-full of pictures). I’d go to either club again, but the Vanguard is the space with the legit history. The music that place has heard over the years. Just legends upon legends who have played there. It's tangible.

I'll say a couple of more things about this experience. 

First of all, I'm amazed at how well the bass playing comes through in these small clubs. Listening to records at home, I seem to get everything except the bass. Horns, drums, piano, whatever. But I miss the bass. It comes through magnificently in person. I have no idea how they get a bass down into the Vanguard but we did ask bassist Dezron Douglas at Birdland how he gets his bass moved around the city. Apparently he can get it in a big cab (I can see that) and on the Subway (I can't imagine how but I trust him).

Second, one of the things my dad liked best about his jazz club visits to New York was the fact that he got to talk to the musicians between or after sets. I remember him talking about his conversations with pianist Marian McPartland in some club while he was on his visits. And sure enough after the Coltrane set, all the musicians were available for conversation, pictures or whatever. It's a completely different post-show vibe that you get at a rock or pop show. Most musicians (but admittedly not all) disappear after the shows. It was cool to see that sort of thing still gong on that my dad remembered so fondly. 

I am pretty sure that my jazz collection is going to get bigger (I just got a new record for my birthday...) and I am also pretty sure I have not visited my last jazz club (already started looking at shows at Blues Alley in DC...). These couple of visits were about getting closer to the music that I've been exploring over the last few months but they were also a conscious gesture to honor and respect and get closer to something my dad loved and loves. I have very few regrets in life but not engaging with this music earlier is one of those. I'll just have to do the best I can with what my dad has intentionally or unintentionally passed to me here. I promise I'll do the best I can.

Birdland: Show over!

---

Coda

A couple of final notes about my dad's love for jazz and my own jazz journey to date. I'll take those two in the opposite order I just wrote them because my thoughts on this type of music are clearly less important than my dad's thoughts. At least from my perspective. 

I have not spent much of my life listening to jazz but I will say that as an art form, it was far, far more sophisticated in the 1950s and early 1960s than anything labeled rock and roll or something like that. I guess I'm also surprised based on my toe-dip in the last nine months or so at how contemporaneous this music is with the emergence of rock music. Put another way, I had no idea that the music my dad was listening to when I was growing up was just 10 or 20 years old at the time. 

I will say that I appreciate incredibly the following six albums that I've discovered since this time last year. I'm picking six for a specific reason, and not because beer comes in six packs. At least not this time.

• Cannonball Adderly: Somethin' Else.
• Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers: Moanin'.
• Kenny Burrell: Midnight Blue.
• John Coltrane: Blue Train.
• Dexter Gordon: Our Man In Paris.
• Grant Green: Idle Moments.

In 2022, I was not able to get a list of essential jazz albums out of my dad. However, I did ask him in the early 1990s for a list of his must-have or essential or desert island disks or whatever you want to call them top jazz albums of all time. And I still have that hand-written list 30 years or so after he wrote it down.

Here's my dad's list of essential jazz albums which he called Foot Tapping List #1. Do with this what you will. Unfortunately, there will never be a List #2.

• Count Basie and His Orchestra: The Atomic Mr. Basie.
• Miles Davis: Ballads OR Greatest Hits.
• Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges: Back to Back.
• Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong: Ella and Louis Again OR The Best of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
• George Lewis: Jazz Funeral In New Orleans.
• Big Joe Turner: The Boss of The Blues.

My dad's list is way different than my list. And I think that's OK. It might reflect the fact that I like different things from my dad or it might reflect the fact that I don't know anything about jazz. I've tried my dad's list. I even asked him for copies of his CDs of his list about 15 or 20 years after I asked him for the list which he made me (mostly; he made a couple of substitutions because I think he didn't have all six on CD and easily copy-able when I asked him). The Atomic Mr. Basie is some good stuff. I'll keep going back to the rest. Maybe when I know a little bit more and can appreciate the nuance and subtlety a little better.

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Piano Sonata No. 17

This is the story of a single piece of music and why travel is so valuable for me. Although it honestly might take me a few more stories than that one to get to the story that I really want to tell. Buckle up for this one!

We went to Vienna right before Christmas to visit their many, many world-famous Christmas markets. That was without a doubt the number one reason we hopped on a plane and flew across the Atlantic Ocean in December of last year. But I can't think of a single trip of even a few days that we've ever taken that is just focused on one thing. There are always usually a lot of sub-themes that fill out our time in between the main attraction or attractions. Vienna here was no exception.

One of our interests we had to explore in Vienna was music. Had to!

Now, I am no stranger to music trips. I've been to Chicago, Memphis, Nashville, Austin, New Orleans and Los Angeles specifically to hang out in bars or clubs or concert halls or just outdoors listening to music. Music that I've loved for decades, music that I've never heard before, music that's stuck with me after the trips, music that I've forgotten about as soon as I've heard it. Rock, pop, blues, country. All of it.

Vienna was none of that. Vienna was all about classical music. Remember when classical music was dominant? Probably not, because pretty much nobody on this planet was alive back then.

Vienna's Staatsoper (or State Opera).

I'd like to think on a typical music trip (especially one where I was staying in the same city for eight nights) that I could explore pretty much everything significant related to music while I was in town. I'd like to visit the major places to listen to live music. I'd like to see all the museums that the city offers about music. I'd like to see all the historical shrines and statues and whatever else there is to commemorate this place as a mover and/or shaker on the worldwide music scene.

It became pretty apparent pretty quickly when we started planning this trip that doing that in Vienna was just not going to work. Hitting every sight, every statue, every museum, every hall and salon and room and closet that is relevant to the history or the now of classical music in Vienna is impossible in a bit more than a week. It's completely infeasible to take in everything because it is absolutely everywhere. And I really do mean that. Everywhere.

I guess the logical question to address at this point is...why? Well quite simply, for a long time (and admittedly a long time ago), Vienna was the most important city in the world when it came to music. Combine a royal family interested in sponsoring and nurturing the arts with enough talent and a couple of superstars (either homegrown or imported from elsewhere) and Vienna from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century was exactly the right environment to create some of the best works of music ever.

So who are we talking about here? Well, briefly (and sticking with the undoubtedly great...), Haydn, Schubert, two Joseph Strausses, Beethoven and Mozart. 

Now, I know...six major composers in about 150 years doesn't seem like a lot. Heck, I could easily identify more than six major bands or artists coming out of London in the 1960s or New York in the 1970s but we are talking about a totally different time here. There was no vinyl or cassettes or CDs or MTV or YouTube or any other quick way to get music out to enough people to sustain hundreds or thousands of artists. Not to mention the fact that most people spent all or almost all of their time trying to just survive. The only people who really had the time to listen to music as a hobby were the aristocracy. And there's only so much music they needed, I guess.

Beethovenplatz, Vienna.

A quick look at what there was to see music-wise in Vienna got us a list of at least seven museums housed in spaces where some of Vienna's most famous composers once lived and probably way more spots than that where we could hear some music live and in person. There was no way we'd have time to get to all seven museums and we decided to settle for just three live music experiences. Since, you know, most of our nights were already booked at Christmas markets throughout the city. 

Museum-wise, we decided to skip the former residences of Joseph Haydn and Johann Strauss along with the birth and death places of Franz Schubert and concentrate instead on Beethoven and Mozart (sticking with the most famous there). Performance-wise, we decided on a variety of experiences in places small and large with crowds small and large, from the very fanciest to the most intimate. We had to do a lot of editing here to get to those three. 

I have to say it must be amazing for a classically trained musician to be in Vienna. I know my perspective is tainted by living in the United States on this issue but it must be incredible to have so many places to play and so many people (even if a lot of them are tourists in some spots) who appreciate what you are doing. I imagine the life of a musician playing in an orchestra in America is an underappreciated, underpaid profession. I imagine (with no real insight or knowledge here) that doing the same thing in Vienna is completely different as a career.

Beethoven Museum, Vienna. Yes, there's going to be a lot of Beethoven stuff here.

All three museums that we had on our list (the Beethoven Museum, the Mozart's Apartment and the Beethoven Pasqualithaus) which we made it to were apartments that either Beethoven or Mozart definitely or probably lived in at one time in their lives. All three were filled with exhibits about the composers which were informative and gave us a lot of details about the composers. But they lacked something which I'll get to in a bit and unless the museums dedicated to Haydn, Strauss and Schubert are substantially different than the two former Beethoven and one former Mozart residences we visited, I'm probably pretty glad that we skipped those other four. 

So what did we learn? Well, big picture it sounds to me like Mozart was kind of a spoiled brat who felt the rules just didn't apply to him while Beethoven was a demanding and frustrated perfectionist who had extreme difficulty dealing with his early deafness. Both were clearly geniuses who were able to channel their gifts into useful output that sticks with us gloriously today and both seemed to be well aware of their genius. That may be a little too simplistic and broad brush but that's what I got out of these three museums. I am sure I missed many subtleties about their lives. For me, by the way, Beethoven is way better than Mozart.

I really appreciated the light these museums shed on Beethoven's working methodology. He clearly started and stopped projects while he worked on other symphonies or concertos or sonatas as they came to him and he asked a ton of his musicians technically, including having them on standby while he finished composing so they could play the piece right after he was done. It actually reminded me of stories about Bob Dylan in the studio prepping his musicians to play with little direction and adjusting after each take. I think the comparison is potentially a pretty good one.

I also appreciated the information in the Beethoven Museum about the spaces where some of Beethoven's symphonies were played. They were tiny. Remember, there was no real commercial market and no real concert halls for regular people to go to listen to symphonies back then so these loud bombastic symphonies were rehearsed and played in spaces that were altogether too small. The volume must have been extreme. No wonder Beethoven went deaf.

Views of the outside of the Beethoven Pasqualithaus.

But the real problem I had with these museums is that there was nothing about being in the former apartments that added anything to the experience, except for realizing where in the city of Vienna they used to live. None of the interior is restored to the appearance of when Mozart or Beethoven lived there and there were no real original objects or written music owned or produced by either man. In fact, historians don't even know which room in at least Mozart's former apartment was the dining room vs. the kitchen vs. a bedroom. It's just a series of empty rooms filled with exhibit after exhibit of non-original objects. There's no reflection of how they lived in the residences because nobody recorded it.

I think the only original items that were (or may have been) in the possession of either composer were the sugar canister and salt and pepper shakers and the music stand (but that's really sort of doubtful based on the display description) in the Beethoven Pasqualithaus. I'm not knocking the alleged authenticity of these items (OK maybe I am just a bit...) but I'm not sure a salt shaker owned by Beethoven adds to the museum that much.

End of that rant, I promise.

Beethoven's sugar canister, salt and pepper shakers and music stand (maybe), Beethoven Pasqualithaus.

We did find a surprise in the Beethoven Pasqualithaus that absolutely crushed us. I think it's worth spending a few minutes on that issue, if only to write down two names.  

When you travel through Europe, eventually somehow when it is least expected, the Holocaust will pop up and jar you back to reality that the wonderful place you are visiting has a much darker piece in its history. And sure enough it did just that at the Pasqualithaus. This particular museum was established in 1941 and in 1941 the Nazi German army had taken control of the city of Vienna. In fact, it was the Nazis that founded the museum in the first place.

To make room for the museum, the Nazis had to expel the family living in the apartment which was thought to have been one of Beethoven's favorite places to live. Of course, the family was Jewish. In June of 1943, Josef and Josefine Eckstein were removed from the apartment and deported to Theresienstadt, a ghetto established by the Nazis in the town of Terezin, in what was then Czechoslovakia. Theresienstadt served as a way station to the various concentration camps the Nazis has set up across Europe. 

On October 23, 1944, the Ecksteins were moved to Auschwitz. They never left. They were murdered along with about 1.1 million other innocent people in that death camp. It makes you really wonder whether that museum should really be in that building at all. Or if more than just a tiny bit of wall space should be dedicated to how the museum was first created.

The Mozart Ensemble Vienna String Quartet at the Mozarthaus.

If there was a part of our Vienna music quest that was more successful (and there was), it was definitely the three performances we attended, primarily because (1) there was live music involved and (2) they didn't require extensive reading. After searching through various websites and our Lonely Planet Vienna guidebook, we eventually settled on something grand (Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Staatsoper), something seasonal (Christmas concert at the Stephensdom) and something intimate (the Mozart Ensemble Vienna String Quartet at the Mozarthaus).

I will say here that the Staatsoper is absolutely an amazing venue. It has to be one of the top few opera houses in the world. The hall is magnificent, the lobbies are breathtaking and the rooms where you can get a snack or a glass of grüner veltliner during the intermission are just gorgeous. You feel like you should be dressed in a suit or a tux for these performances just based on the place itself. I wore jeans, a sweater and boots. Hey, it was the winter. Or December, at least.

This was probably my second Mozart opera ever. I think I saw Don Giovanni years ago although I can remember very little about that experience. I don't know what Mozart was smoking or taking when he wrote The Magic Flute but it seemed shall we say not absolutely rooted in reality. Awesome music, the singing was terrific and the venue was perfect but I'd say I'm passing on future opportunities to see The Magic Flute.

Intermission time at The Magic Flute. Grüner veltliner, anyone?

I'll also say that the Christmas concert in the Stephensdom (or St. Stephen's Cathedral) right in the city center was a great complement to the Christmas markets we went to Vienna to see. However, the Stephensdom is huge (I mean it is a Gothic cathedral after all...) and a small ensemble of musicians along with a couple of vocalists struggled to fill the space with music in a meaningful way. It's also really cold inside an uninsulated stone building when it's snowing outside.

So that leaves the Mozart Ensemble Vienna as the clear winners of our live music experience in Vienna. This night out was super intimate. It's you and four musicians in a tiny room inside an historic building just steps from the Stephensplatz. There is not a bad seat in the house, particularly considering there are only six rows of chairs in the place. 

There were a couple of things that I really loved about this performance. First, there was a little historical context provided before each number which I appreciated. The comment that Schubert is probably the most important composer for string quartets is something that sticks with me above all others. It makes me want to explore that comment someday.

Second, they played the hell out of the music, particularly Schubert's Quartet in D Minor, Op. 76, No. 2. I mean really nailed it. It was aggressive and passionate and dynamic. I loved it. It's incredible to hear musicians play this way, especially when it comes to classical music. We saw a Vivaldi concert in Venice years ago where the same thing happened. Just awesome stuff. We think of classical music sometimes as calm background music. It's not at all sometimes.

Christmas concert in the Stephensdom.

But this post isn't really about any of that stuff I've just written. It's supposed to be about one piece of music. And that piece of music is Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17.

In the first room of the Beethoven Museum, there is a story about Ludwig van Beethoven seeing a rider on a horse canter by his window while in his apartment at what is now the Museum. The Beethoven Museum today is surrounded by other buildings in a neighborhood but at the time he occupied it in 1802, it was in the middle of the country. That bucolic view and the horse's pace supposedly created a piece of music in his head that date which eventually became his 17th piano sonata. 

The story of this inspiration is written on the wall next to a wheel with a handle. Turn the handle and the Sonata plays. We turned the handle as directed.

I have never listened to a piano sonata in my life. I have tried once or twice but it has historically been difficult for me to get into a solo piano track lacking any sort of external motivation or interest. But that piece of music in that museum was just incredible. It has pace, it has melody, it has passion, it has depth and tenderness and forcefulness. It's dynamic. I've never really heard a piece of music quite like it and I have listened to a lot of music. I mean I guess it should be all that because Beethoven wrote it but I'm sure he has some clunkers out there. All artists do, don't they? Even Beethoven?

I know if I had really wanted to I could have started going through Beethoven's piano sonatas systematically on my own. I know I didn't have to travel to Vienna and discover this piece of music. But in a way, there's no way I would have found this without traveling. Maybe that's stupid. Maybe it's inconsequential that I've discovered this one piece of music that I now love. I don't think that it is any of those things. I love this sonata. And I know I wouldn't have found it without traveling.

Don't get me wrong, here. I'm not saying that the rest of our music experience in Vienna outside of one room in a museum was a waste or wasn't an essential part of our trip to Austria. It was. I loved all the music we saw live (even shivering in the Stephensdom) and I got a ton out of the Beethoven and Mozart museums we visited. But without Vienna there would have been no discovery of that piano sonata. And I'm happier today for it. 

As soon as we got back and home and I had the chance, I bought the complete set of Beethoven's sonatas (there are 32) on a nine CD set (yes, I still buy CDs...). I've listened to No. 17 I don't know how many times. I've dabbled in the others and have not played a single one twice. Travel...I'm telling you...it changes us.

That's the story. Apologies on the length.

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How We Did It

We visited the Beethoven Museum, Mozart's Apartment at the Mozarthaus and the Beethoven Pasqualithaus. We also attended a recital by the Mozart Ensemble Vienna at the Mozarthaus; saw an opera at the Staatsoper; and shivered through a concert at the Stephensdom. With the exception of the Beethoven Museum, all of these attractions are inside the Ringstrasse and easily accessible if you are staying in or near the city center of Vienna. To get to the Beethoven Museum, we took the number 37 tram from the Schottentor U stop. Get off at the Hohe Varta stop and walk about a block or so north from there. The trams in Vienna are awesome. They run frequently and on time.

The two Beethoven museums are both owned by the City of Vienna, as are the four museums about Haydn, Strauss and Schubert that I mentioned in this post. If you have the time and inclination to be a completist on the history of music in Vienna, there is a combination ticket for all six properties. 

We found all the concerts (an opera is a concert for the purposes of this section of this post) we attended to be reasonably priced and the quality of the sound and the performers at both the Staatsoper and the Mozarthaus to be excellent. You can spend a lot of money on a ticket at the Staatsoper. We sat in the upper deck and thought the view and the sound was just great from up there. Of course, we are not fanatical about opera. 

Concerts at the Stephensdom are not restricted to the Christmas season. We got our tickets from the Kunst & Kultur website, which seems to have programs throughout the year, although certainly not as many as there were before Christmas.

We spent a lot of time looking at various venues before picking our three concerts. There's a lot to look at honestly but we found a good starting place was the Vienna tourism website's page about music in the city. 

Also, there are plenty of statues of composers around the city if you are into that sort of thing. I am, although the only one we sought out was the status of Beethoven on the Beethovenplatz.

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