Big Apple Jazz Blog

Fridays will never be the same.  There’s no place like Harlem and there’s no other vocalist series like this one in the clandestine Gin Fizz – a speakeasy hidden in plain sight. Tickets in cooperation with AirBnB Concerts.  Singers Showcase   March 16, 2018 at Gin Fizz Boncellia Lewis with Shareef Clayton, trumpet Hilliard Greene, bass Frank Fallon, drums Paul Odeh, keys Gin Fizz,  308 Lenox Ave. (125th / 126th Streets).  2 /3 Subway to 125th Street.  Doors: 6:30. 1st set: 7PM.   2nd set: 8:30PM   It’s almost impossible to find someone who doesn’t love Billie Holiday.  Her voice, her phrasing, her songwriting, her commanding presence, and her life story all compel us toward this devotion.  Lady Day stands alone as a figure in popular culture who has left her mark on generation after generation of artists and music lovers…

  Is Billie Holiday Street Next?   In the current climate of social and political upheaval and the potential for national soul searching, there is no better representative of America’s promise outpacing America’s flaws than Billie Holiday. I’m about to set off on a year-long Billie Holiday kick. Hopefully, the end result will be a street-naming in Lady Day’s honor. You can’t help loving Billie Holiday for her talent, courage, perseverance, individualism, good humor, and her unparalleled ability to make you feel things deeply when she sang. Let’s begin this in 1939… At 24 years of age she was cracking open the civil rights movement by delivering nightly riveting encores of Strange Fruit to packed houses at the proactively integrated Cafe Society in Greenwich Village. Where did that song come from and what was it about? The song is credited…

New York City: Affordable Live Jazz Clubs In Manhattan (Where you can hear the greats from Greenwich Village to Harlem) By Gordon Polatnick I started Big Apple Jazz Tours with the understanding that jazz is at its best when musicians and audiences are sharing an intimate, interactive experience that feels like it could go on forever, and that…

A vintage photo of a group of people walking down the Blvd of Dreams in front of the Lafayette by the Tree of Hope   Hi, folks, this is Gordon Polatnick, of Big Apple Jazz Tours.  There are a few things that I’m inexplicably geeky about that I want to explore in this blog.  Most are…

How do you like the new site? Big Apple Jazz Tours is proud to announce we are celebrating our 20th year in business with a website face lift.  We want to thank David and Kristin and the team at Fare Harbor for the excellent work and invaluable help getting the site up and running. The…