The Catalina I know well… and I’ve discussed it and other clubs here before (see the related posts). It can be good, but also routinely does not succeed very well as a jazz club.

The “sitting-type” of Jazz, as you put it, is what I’m really talking about. Where people are actually listening to the music and creating music in a real jazz club setting, as opposed to making pleasant sounds for people to dance to (which is nice, but is something else). I completely agree with you (as I’ve said above) that there are lots of bits of jazz and related music to be found in reasonable quantities if one counts the “dinner-jazz” models, and the “dance-jazz” models, and so forth. What I’m trying to say is that it is puzzling that a city like LA does not support much in the way of what you think of as the sitting-type jazz. There are very few true jazz clubs (dedicated to the music every night with world class musicians coming through- the Bakery being the best, and it has issues - by the way the plastic chairs have been improved upon), and the few that there are have very low attendance for a city this size.

Cheers,

-cvj

As for live music, it varies from venue to venue, but yes, there are rotating bands that will play here and there. I believe Jonathan Stout’s Campus Five played at the free concerts in Culver City and MacArthur Park’s newly renovated amphitheatre last summer. Barbara Morrison comes about once a quarter to Lindygroove in Pasadena, too. Rusty’s Rhythm Club in Playa del Rey often hosts live bands a couple times a month, as well. Maxwell DeMille’s Cicada Club in downtown always has live bands on Sundays. Mora’s Modern Rhythmists are always playing at different spots around town. Once in awhile, bands will stop by from out of town (or even internationally) on a tour of the LA swing scene.

Live music is always a blast. Even better if it can be danced to. =)

For swing-type music, yes, maybe. (Even though it is a very small component of the whole.)

Is the music live? That would be a lot of fun, I agree.

-cvj

However, it is basically a square room with plastic chairs lined in neat rows in front of an elevated stage (something to do with the rules with being a non-profit… they can’t put money into better furniture and so forth I’ve heard)…. and supporting it means that on some nights, you can have a big worldclass headliner playing their ass off on the stage with about 10 people in the audience. That same person playing in New York (or even London) on that same night would have people out the door, jammed against the walls, and sitting on the piano. In a city this size it is baffling to see someone like Cyrus Chestnut or Joshua Redman playing to ten people. (To be fair, there are some nights when it is packed too.)

-cvj

Yes, there’s any number of places that “do a bit of jazz” from time to time during the week. I know several of them. All very pleasant and welcome… and all (or most) well short of an actual jazz club with atmosphere. These are not Jazz clubs - venues dedicated to the music.

I actually find the prevailing “dinner jazz” model that reigns in LA highly frustrating. Usually you are forced to sit on the sides where you likely have no view if you are not dining, and the tables are then held for people who are asked to pay way too much for mediocre food, and who are most often (sometimes understandably) more interested in having a conversation over dinner (raising their voices to be heard over the music) than shutting up and paying attention to the artists over on the stage. Might as well just put on a CD. And then, being tied to the dinner schedule, these places often are done by 10:00pm or so, essentially (and if not most people inexplicably just leave anyway), at about the time when normally the second set in a real jazz club begins, and where the best music of the night is to be found…Sigh…

I could go on more about this, but I’ll sound like a broken record…

Cheers,

-cvj

http://www.thedownbeatcafe.com/music.html

Largo (opposite Canter’s) sometimes has good jazz.