How do you run a jazz club?

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  • Byas'd Opinion
    • Dec 2024

    How do you run a jazz club?

    Bill Kyle of Edinburgh's excellent venue The Jazz Bar discusses how to run a successful jazz venue.

    The Jazz House, BBC Radio Scotland, 8pm tonight (repeated Sunday at 8) or online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014ggtb

    Alternatively, if in you're Edinburgh tonight, pop along to The Jazz Bar to hear Tom Bancroft's new trio with Tom Cawley on piano and Norwegian bassist Per Zanussi, then catch the programme later.
  • Serial_Apologist
    Full Member
    • Dec 2010
    • 37814

    #2
    A wonderful and indeed salutary story of untold generosity, sheer hard work and commitment, backed up by good (dependable) fortune(s) in the end. The moral seems to be: stick together, and stay around! If only this had been the case when I was involved in promoting live jazz.

    Thanks for sending us this, Byas'd

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    • Ian Thumwood
      Full Member
      • Dec 2010
      • 4225

      #3
      Interesting to contrast with the experience with one of the three pubs in my village that endeavoured to put on jazz over the last month or so. The first act that played was a singer who was successful enough to have her own website which, when I googled it, discovered that she had nothing to do with jazz (more of a pop singer) and had been employed a part of function for singles to get to meet each other! Gave this one a miss but surprised that another gig was then organised about a month later which offered "Latino Jazz." As a fan of Latin jazz , it seemed pretty much a home banker that the quality of this band would be pretty good insofar that this specialist music is extremely technically demanding. When I turned up I was surprised to see that the band has a line up of violin doubling keyboard, two guitars and a bass. The music was a combination of bossa material played by a group who included local guitarist Bill Pritchard who is pretty well-known and respected around these parts. All in all, as local groups go, they knew their stuff and played an eclectic repertoire.

      The point of my post is this. During the half time interval no one had turned up (small wonder as The Forge further down the road is the more popular destination on account of the restaurant) but the temporary landlord lambasted the musicians as he had expected the floor to be filled with dancers. "No exactly Latino jazz, is it?" was his comment and he was pretty hostile towards the musicians. The only people younger than me in the pub were playing pool and most of the older people were standing around talking. Three weeks later the pub has closed and is now be refitted with a view to challenging the local rival.

      I had hoped that jazz would have become a regular thing there as rock groups had previously been booked over the course of the last few years. Interesting to see that someone was trying to encourage jazz of a good standard in a village but I was a bit surprised by the inability of the landlord to really know who he was booking. Makes you wonder if jazz is really bad news for business or is it victim of being very poorly managed and co-ordinated within the provinces.

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