Jon-Erik Kellso (and others) @ Cafe Bohemia - New York City Article

Jon-Erik Kellso (and others)
Cafe Bohemia
15 Barrow Street
Thursdays, going forward

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From 1955 to 1960, Cafe Bohemia, was, no less than its neighbor around the corner, the Village Vanguard, one of the epicenters of the jazz world: virtually every major figure in the music played and recorded there, including Miles Davis, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Cannonball and Nat Adderley, Herbie Nichols, and a particularly spectacular recording by trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s quintet. There was so much great music heard there at the time that it’s hard to believe that the club’s heyday lasted for only a mere six years. Now this secluded basement has been re-opened as a new venue, with jazz as the main item on the musical menu but also such worthy constituents as singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked, and various world music and blues groups. On Thursday nights, the outstanding (and very busy) trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso (who’s already playing on Sundays at the Ear Inn, also in the West Village, with his quartet, the Ear-Regulars, and on Mondays and Tuesdays at Iguana with the estimable Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks) with a band billed as the Cafe Bohemia Quartet, co-starring clarinetist Evan Arntzen, bassist Conal Fowlkes, and banjo virtuoso Eddy Davis - a mash-up of venerable players from both the Giordano and Woody Allen bands. The charge is reasonable, the basement venue (like the silver lining, you have to look for it) itself is somewhat dumpy but congenial (the nicest part of the decor, such as it is, are the framed covers of classic albums recorded in the spot 60 years ago), and the music is superb.