I’m so busy that I wasn’t planning to blog again until Tuesday at the earliest, but I couldn’t wait to tell you about my very first visit to Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Columbus Circle nightclub, from which I returned a few minutes ago after hearing a breathtaking set by Jim Hall and his quartet. As regular readers of this blog know, I consider Hall to be the greatest living jazz guitarist, a tersely lyrical magician who gets more and more music out of fewer and fewer notes. He outdid himself this evening, playing a version of “All the Things You Are” so spare and elliptical that Count Basie might well have thought it understated. If you haven’t heard his latest CD, Magic Meeting, go here and buy it at once.
As I say, this was my first peek inside Dizzy’s Club C*c*-C*la (I henceforth refuse to spell out the loathsome name in full), and I was impressed. Aside from everything else, it’s the most attractive jazz club in New York, with a bandstand placed directly in front of a glass wall that looks out on the Manhattan skyline. The blond bentwood walls are acoustically gratifying. The service is discreet, the food good. If you’re there strictly for the music, the bar is both unusually long and strategically placed so as to supply a clear view of the musicians. The cover charge is $30 a head, neither cheap nor unprecedentedly high. I’ll be back.
That’s all for now–Louis awaits. See you a bit later in the week. Go get ’em, OGIC!
P.S. No, I didn’t watch the Oscars. Why bother? Did anything even remotely surprising happen there? My trainer will testify that I called it for Million Dollar Baby last week….