[Dixielandjazz] Hard to believe

[Stephen G Barbone]

This story is hard to believe. Virtually FREE Jazz and nobody comes to  
listen (or play)? I think perhaps this is what happens when bands,  
musicians and audiences get old and die off before they figured out  
that you have to attract  younger musicians and younger audiences to  
the genre. And, you have to connect with that audience. I guarantee  
that there are many younger musicians in NYC who could get this scene  
going again. And make money doing it.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com.//barbonestreetjazzband


Jazz at Noon Is Closing Out a 46-Year Run


MAY 18, 2011 - NY TIMES - BY COREY KILGANNON


Leslie Lieber wants to make it clear: His age is not the issue.He  
turned 99 in March, and he quit playing golf last year, and maybe he  
takes a moment longer to step up onto the bandstand each Friday at  
noon and take his alto saxophone out of its case.

But none of the above are the reason he is ringing the death knell for  
Jazz at Noon, the regular end-of-workweek lunchtime jam sessions he  
founded in 1965 and has been running for the 46 continuous years since  
then.“I could keep right on going,” he said at one such recent jam  
session, at the Players club on East 20th Street. “It’s just that we  
don’t get the numbers of players we used to get. It’s harder to keep  
the sessions going.”

“You know, jazz is not this country’s popular music anymore,” he  
added. Things were different when he was 8 years old and growing up in  
St. Louis during the Great Depression. He bought a penny whistle for a  
quarter and learned to jazz up the simple pipe. He started playing the  
alto saxophone, but continued to improvise jazz solos on the penny  
whistle. He even stunned the legendary gypsy guitarist Django  
Reinhardt by pulling out the whistle and blowing a couple of tunes  
with him in Paris in 1945.

Mr. Lieber founded Jazz at Noon in October 1965 to give musicians who  
had chosen non-jazz careers an opportunity to play together. The  
series has since become a New York City fixture, a haven for jazz- 
playing New Yorkers with day jobs — doctors and lawyers, businessmen,  
advertising executives, to name just a few. The sessions began as an  
extended lunch hour and remained a two-set, two-hour affair nearly  
every Friday, except summers, at locations that changed every couple  
of years, including Cafe 43 on West 43d Street, Sardi’s on West 44th,  
the Drake Hotel and Café St. Bart’s in St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal  
Church at Park Avenue and 50th Street. These days, the group plays at  
the Players club, on Gramercy Park South.

The crowd now is nothing like the 300 people that Jazz at Noon drew at  
its peak, with a dozen or more musicians waiting to play. “We’re now  
down to five regulars,” Mr. Lieber said. His wife, Edie, remained  
optimistic, noting that “oh, he’s been announcing the end for 20  
years.” “I have?” said Mr. Lieber, who insisted that this time it was  
for real, “especially because now we have to hire union musicians to  
fill in, on piano and bass.”

Some players have died, some have moved to Florida, and some can’t  
make the trip to the club anymore, he said. On Friday, the four other  
regulars included the two tenor sax players — George De Leon, 80, and  
Ed Finkel, 82 — with Bill Wurtzel, 73, on guitar, and Stephen Solow,  
65, on drums. “I’m the baby of the bunch,” Mr. Solow, a psychologist  
in private practice in Manhattan, said with a laugh. “For me, it’s an  
opportunity to play with friends and play out in public.”

Mr. Wurtzel has been a professional jazz guitarist ever since quitting  
his job as a creative director at a Manhattan advertising agency in  
1989. Mr. De Leon, of Manhattan, has been playing with Jazz at Noon  
for 15 years. He is a psychologist who specializes in drug abuse  
treatment. Mr. Finkel is a structural engineer from Watchung N.J., who  
began playing at the sessions more than 25 years ago. He played as a  
young man in big bands before pursuing engineering. Both tenor players  
still work their day jobs, and both credit the jazz sessions with  
invigorating them. “It’s a life saver,” Mr. Finkel said. “I cant’ wait  
for Friday to show up.”

  Listeners have always been welcome, usually with no cover charge,  
and the Players club opens its dining room to the public for the  
sessions and serves a modestly priced lunch menu. Traditionally, the  
musicians have pooled money each week and hired a well-known musician  
as a guest artist. Stars have included Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton,  
Dizzy Gillespie, Zoot Sims, Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan. Last month,  
Ted Curson, a trumpeter who played with Charles Mingus, was the guest.

During World War II, he was an Army captain in Paris and found Mr.  
Reinhardt playing in a club, left alone by the Nazis. Mr. Reinhardt  
took Mr. Lieber to his gypsy camp outside Paris. Mr. Reinhardt had a  
goat in his trailer. Mr. Lieber invited Mr. Reinhardt to record on  
Armed Forces Radio in Paris. Mr. Lieber jammed with Mr. Reinhart on  
two songs, which were recorded and played on the air.Mr. Lieber made a  
career in public relations and magazines — mostly at This Week  
magazine, a widely circulating, syndicated Sunday newspaper supplement.

Jazz at Noon will run through June 10, with the vibraphonist Warren  
Chiasson as the special guest. The trumpeter Jeremy Pelt will sit in  
this Friday, and Junior Mance will play piano on May 27. After the  
final song last Friday — as always, Duke Ellington’s “In a Mellotone”  
— Mr. Lieber offered a plea to the dozen or so remaining audience  
members.

“Take it up amongst your friends and let’s see if we can put this back  
on the jazz map,” he said.