JARDINE'S RESTAURANT & JAZZ CLUB LIVE JAZZ ONLY HAPPENS ONCE
Live Jazz seven nights a week!
4536 Main Street
Kansas City, Missouri 64111
816-561-6480
EMAIL OR MAKE RESERVATIONS Kansas City, Missouri 64111
816-561-6480
jazz4beena@gmail.com
carriebrockman@gmail.com
JARDINE'S is the home of LIVE JAZZ
in Kansas City
LIVE JAZZ 7 NIGHTS A WEEK
in Kansas City
LIVE JAZZ 7 NIGHTS A WEEK
(... Following is an excerpt from an article in INK magazine)
Take it from Stan Kessler, 56, a prominent KC trumpeter with regular gigs at jazz clubs like Jardine's Restaurant and Jazz Club and The Blue Room.
"Part of the Kansas City consciousness is that jazz is cool," Kessler says. "What's taking a new direction is people are more willing to take risks. The people wanting to take risks are the young guys."
A signpost of this trend is the late-night jazz series that began this spring at Jardine's 4536 Main St. near the Country Club Plaza. The series has showcased young artists such as Miles Bonny, John Brewer, Brandon Draper, Shay Estes, Mark Lowrey and Mark Southerland, who heads up the experimental group Snuff Jazz.
The late-night series is curated by Carrie Brockman, 32, and Jeff Simon, 29, who both work at Jardine's. Simon and Brockman say the series serves many purposes: It cultivates young musicians, it brings crowds in from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. and, well, it might just help the Kansas City jazz scene evolve.
The late-night series is a bit of a departure for Jardine's, which has always been a strictly traditional jazz club.
"It's a period of growth, and we want everyone to come along with us," Brockman says.
Simon cites a new form of jazz, which uses hip-hop beats.
"It's a progression of where the music can go," he says. "The more that has an outlet, the more it could inspire other people. We could really get something going."
"This place has been a certain way for a long time. And it's time for something new," Brockman says.
Shay Estes, 27, calls Jardine's "the homeroom" for young musicians in Kansas City.
Estes, a jazz singer, is usually backed by Mark Lowrey on the piano, Jeff Harshbarger on bass and Zack Albetta on drums.
The group rearranges tunes by Radiohead, Tom Waits, The Church and The Beatles, "because how many times can you do the same jazz standards over and over?" Estes says.
"It's all about embracing what you love," Harshbarger explains. "It's really what an artist is supposed to do. There really isn't room to say, 'I only listen to jazz.'"
"Some of the older guys don't get it. That's a taste issue, " Harshbarger says. "I think it's great. The reason (jazz) stays alive is because it changes and grows."
Harshbarger, 33, is a full-time musician. He also plays bass in Snuff Jazz and Wee Snuff, arguably the most out-there jazz outfit in town.
At Wee Snuff shows, Harshbarger and his fellow musicians don elaborate costumes, sit at school desks and play miniature instruments among flashing LED lights. Sometimes, models dressed in horn sculptures prance around and photograph the show.
Josh Adams, 26, plays drums in Snuff Jazz and rock band Ghosty. With jazz, he says, "there's really no limits."
"It kind of opens our mind to different avenues,," Adams says. The other guys in Snuff Jazz, he adds, "are so open-minded that anything goes, we kind of show up not knowing what is going to happen."
Thirty-nine-year-old Mark Southerland, saxophonist, horn sculptor and ringleader of the two groups, sees his craft as hybrid art, not just music.
"It's kind of like some weird cult has come in and is performing some strange ceremony," Southerland explains. Stringent jazz purists, he adds, sometimes don't get it. He considers that a good thing.
"Good art," he says, "wins some people over and pisses other people off."
Southerland is certainly winning people over: Last month, Southerland was one of three recipients of the Charlotte Street Awards for Generative Performing Artists, a new program in Kansas City. His prize? $5,000.
"The theatrical elements of his performances," says Charlotte Street panelist Paul Rudy, an associate professor and coordinator of composition at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music, "add a whole new layer of profound social commentary. He's breaking boundaries where no one knew they existed."
Matt Hopper, a 26-year-old local guitarist, was at Jardine's the first night Snuff Jazz played there early this spring. Snuff Jazz followed traditional jazz diva Ida McBeth.
"Snuff Jazz, those guys are going for sound effects," Hopper says. "They bring in the downtown, Westport crowd...A lot of people left, because it was like apples and oranges."
(excerpt from Ink magazine)
by sarah benson
{ ink } May 14, 2008
