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Big Apple Jazz Blog

Articles by Gordon Polatnick

Insider’s Guide to Harlem’s Jazz Club Scene -2025

  NAMA – New Amsterdam Musical Association – photo by Gordon Polatnick   Exclusive Big Apple Jazz’s Insider’s Guide to Harlem Jazz by Gordon Polatnick The longest standing jazz venues in Harlem are at the opposite ends of the neighborhood and two right in the middle. Parlor Entertainment is up at 160th Street and Minton’s…

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December 16, 2024

“Bebopping…” The 1st blog blast from the past.

Marcus Persiani, Avi Cohen, Patience Higgins, Wayne Escoffery – St. Nick’s Pub jam session Having just discovered this vintage blog post from the “smoking-in-clubs-days” on an old hard drive, I rush now to chuck it up here to give New York city’s live jazz fans, a chance to feel nostalgic and maybe a little old….

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October 21, 2024

2024 Big Apple Jazz Scene: Harlem Jazz Clubs: Minton’s Playhouse and Beyond

by Gordon Polatnick   Happy Autumn Friends: The Good News First: This has been a bounce-back year in the storied Harlem jazz club world, (which we’ve been tracking since 1997). The pandemic and resulting inflationary economy has done a number on the scene.  Minton’s Playhouse, which had a strong weekly schedule of excellent musicians, (and…

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September 26, 2024

What kind of jazz fan are you?

This blog post was taken down (by the guy who wrote it) for being too ornery.

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May 11, 2022

COVID Current List of Open Manhattan Jazz Clubs – OCT. 2021

The light at the end of the tunnel report – We are finding it difficult to pull together jazz tours that can get to three clubs a night within 4-5-hours as we did prior to March 2020.  In March 2021 we were able to start touring again – taking guests to live jazz performances in only one club per night, which was a blessing, hearing some of the most joyous nights of music we ever witnessed.   Nowadays, we are happy to report that hearing live jazz in two clubs per night is becoming typical on certain nights of the week.  Importantly, some regularly scheduled outdoor jazz events have been produced by local heroes throughout the pre-vaccine pandemic to great effect – bringing all-star players into intimate settings with little or no fanfare.  These events helped sustain the scene through…

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October 7, 2021

Still Life: NYC Jazz Clubs – COVID – Survival Score Card

     As we head into the 9th month of pandemic deprivation, we are not confident that jazz life will ever resemble pre-COVID status.   All music venues struggle against all odds to remain in business during this extended lockdown.        Performers and performance venues were likely hit the hardest as precautionary health…

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December 29, 2020

The Church of Saint John Coltrane – A Blast from the Past

The Jazz Church by Gordon Polatnick Originally published in the Haight Ashbury Free Press circa 1995  Sometimes I think I’m the only one who understands what true religion is.   It’s that cozy state of mind where nothing is more apparent than the unassailable fact that each of us belongs here on Earth, and is deeply…

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December 23, 2020

WSJ – The Alhambra Ballroom in Harlem

     If you’re a hopeless romantic pining for a sepia toned, 100 year ago version of New York City you will marvel at how well-preserved Harlem still appears to be.  If coming from the laughably tall and thin sky-scraper race to the clouds on 57th Street, it’s strangely comforting to note that the buildings…

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November 12, 2020

Live Jazz In Harlem Clubs during COVID-19 in Autumn 2020

Everyone is asking the same question and dealing with the same conundrum: Is indoor jazz clubbing out of the question during COVID in NYC, and if not, how does it work?  New York got hit so hard at the start of Covid that the lockdown period was followed by a very prudent and organized phased…

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October 26, 2020

The Harlem Jazz Scene – a retrospective on the day after St. Nick’s Pub fire

We woke up to the devastating news of a deadly fire last night in Harlem on the set of a Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Willem Dafoe, Leslie Mann movie called Motherless Brooklyn.  With that kind of star power glaring their vision, what reporters so far have overlooked is that the charred set of…

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March 23, 2018