Brooklyn Jazz Renaissance

High-Quality Music in Casual Cafés

By NATE CHINEN

Published: May 26, 2006

ON almost any given Sunday, the trumpeter John McNeil walks out of his apartment and down a few tree-lined blocks to Night and Day, a bistro on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. Since February, Mr. McNeil has held a weekly gig in a rear annex of the restaurant with a quartet he formed with the tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry. A hangout for neighborhood residents and a magnet for musicians, the engagement has become a fixture of Brooklyn's rich and booming jazz scene.

Donna Alberico for The New York Times

At the Tea Lounge, a patron, top, works on a laptop while listening to Curtis Hasselbring, above, on trombone, play with Andrew D'Angelo on sax and Shane Endsley on trumpet.

Richard Perry/The New York Times

The Tony Malaby Tuba Trio plays Barbès, in Park Slope, known as the vanguard of the new Brooklyn jazz scene, while, from left, Vlad Ouzienko, Gregory Boleslavsky and Jeffrey Altman listen from front-row seats.

The rise of that scene — which, like its borough, is an assemblage of enclaves — has been one of the most significant developments for jazz in New York in recent years. (Every bit as significant as the Brooklyn rock explosion of a few years ago, with which it shouldn't be confused.) Through a growing network of low-rent spaces mostly booked by enterprising musicians, Brooklyn has assumed a vital role in the city's larger jazz culture. And the music has been a boon for listeners of all kinds, including those who have to cross the East River to hear it.

To his great delight, Mr. McNeil barely has to cross the street. "I've lived here since the early 1970's," he said one Sunday, between sets at Night and Day. For a long time he was one of many Brooklyn jazz citizens who had to travel to Manhattan for staples of employment and entertainment. Many musicians still make that commute, occasionally to perform at marquee clubs like the Blue Note and the Village Vanguard, but more often to hold court in small rooms like the 55 Bar, Fat Cat and the Cornelia Street Café, which is owned by Robin Hirsch, one of two partners behind Night and Day.

In a sense Brooklyn's jazz clubs operate on the same plane as those West Village bars. (It's not uncommon for a group to play one night at the 55 Bar and the next at a spot in Brooklyn.) The difference between the two scenes, in terms of audience, is outlined succinctly by Mr. Hirsch, based on firsthand expertise: "The Village will draw an international crowd, while Park Slope is strictly local."

Certainly the crowd is overwhelmingly local at Tea Lounge on Union Street in Park Slope. Walk into the cavernous coffeehouse on a Thursday or Friday night, and you'll probably spot a few strollers nestled among the couches, along with laptop computers and stylish casual attire. You'll also see adventurous young jazz musicians playing for tips, since Tea Lounge doesn't have a cover charge.

That policy attracts an audience more random and robust than the musicians might otherwise hope to reach, especially in Manhattan. This winter the alto saxophonist Andrew D'Angelo played one show to more than 100 people, a large crowd for an avant-garde jazz show. Some of the listeners paid a suggested donation; others merely paid attention. Oren Arnon, who books the room, recently pegged its vibe: "a combination of quality jazz and something social, which doesn't happen often enough in this city."

A similar ethos prevails at Barbès, universally acknowledged as the vanguard (Village Vanguard, even) of the new Brooklyn jazz scene. "We tried to build a no-pressure environment for audiences and musicians," said Olivier Conan, who owns the bar with a fellow French expatriate and musician, Vincent Douglas. The club's success confirms the wisdom of that premise.

Barbès may be the place most responsible for the perception of a Brooklyn jazz renaissance. Its cozy dimensions suit small audiences and rapt attention. And its booking describes a rough bouquet of sounds: from French musette to Brazilian forró, as well as multiple strains of jazz, from Gypsy swing to collective free improvisation.

Long-term residencies, hardly a staple in Manhattan, are a prominent feature of the programming at Barbès. The violinist Jenny Scheinman usually plays on Tuesday nights, seasoning her music with flecks of jazz, classical and rustic folk. Wednesdays are devoted to an avant-garde series organized by the saxophonist Michaël Attias. (He isn't the only musician maintaining a series in the area; six blocks south, the keyboardist James Carney books Sunday nights at Bar 4, a red-lighted dive.)

Last month the clarinetist and saxophonist Chris Speed started Skirl, an independent record label with the express purpose of documenting some of the experimental artists in the regular Barbès orbit. The label's next release party is scheduled for Thursday at the club.

Experimentation and eclecticism are hardly limited to Park Slope. In Williamsburg they converge at Rose Live Music, a stylish lounge on Grand Street that opened just a few months ago. They come together even more explicitly during the Williamsburg Jazz Festival, which will have its fourth season in September.

But nothing beats the neighborhood's leading spot, Zebulon Café Concert, which combines the flea-market chic of Barbès (the owners, Guillaume Blestel and Jef and Jocelyn Soubiran, are French) with the no-cover rule of Tea Lounge (but with one significant distinction: every artist receives a guarantee). Zebulon's programming has lately leaned markedly toward world music, but the free-jazz violinist Billy Bang has made notable appearances, as has the composer and conductor Butch Morris.

Mr. Morris also helped inaugurate a more extreme outpost, the nonprofit Issue Project Room, when it relocated last June from the East Village into a silo on the Gowanus Canal. "The industrial environment tends to inspire a rugged sort of experimentation," said Suzanne Fiol, the organization's director, hours before a recent premiere by the Japanese composer Shoko Nagai.

Rugged experimentation of a different sort was one hallmark of the jazz scene in Brooklyn during its original heyday, from the late 1950's through the 60's. Throughout those years a cluster of African-American establishments thrived around Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue.

One of them, the Blue Coronet, served as a laboratory for youngbloods like the tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter and the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. Another was immortalized by Mr. Hubbard with a 1965 Blue Note album called "The Night of the Cookers: Live at Club La Marchal," on which he locked horns with Lee Morgan in a casual but heated exchange.

"Going back to 1960, there was something loosely called a Brooklyn sound," said Robert Myers, referring in part to that album. "And it started with the venues, which gave the musicians license to explore new avenues onstage and not be confined by management." Until the close of 2004 Mr. Myers operated Up Over Jazz Café, a bar on Flatbush Avenue that fulfilled a similar function for the latest generation of post-bop strivers, like the tenor saxophonist Marcus Strickland and the pianist Robert Glasper.

Mr. Glasper provides an illustrative example of the current Brooklyn-Manhattan jazz symbiosis. He arrived in the city at the tail end of the 1990's, settling in Brooklyn but matriculating at the New School University in Manhattan. He quickly plugged into a circuit of jam sessions stretching from Freddy's Backroom, on Dean Street in Park Slope, to Smalls, a crucible of young talent in Greenwich Village.

At Up Over Jazz he found steady work and a space to hone his craft. But after he earned the imprimatur of a Blue Note Records contract, his next career move was clear: a week at the Village Vanguard. (He concludes his second engagement there this weekend with his trio.)

Mr. Glasper's example also illustrates the existence of a parallel Brooklyn jazz movement among African-Americans in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. Self-consciously styled as a revival of Brooklyn's golden era, this scene includes institutions like Jazz 966, a series held for the last 16 years at the Fort Greene Senior Citizens Council; 651 Arts, a nonprofit concert presenting organization; and the Concord Baptist Church, which holds occasional jazz services. In April a consortium of these and other groups mounted the seventh annual Central Brooklyn Jazz Festival, with "Jazz: A Music of the Spirit" as its theme.

The author of that theme, the trumpeter Ahmed Abdullah, was a visible presence during the festival, especially at Sista's Place, a communally owned coffeehouse and salon in Bedford-Stuyvesant. "African-Americans have rarely owned the music's means of production," he said in a phone conversation. "The music has to be in our community if it's going to grow. We've got to have an alternative to mainstream institutions."

The crowd that packed Sista's Place one rainy Saturday for a festival performance by the trumpeter Charles Tolliver made it look as if Mr. Abdullah's objective was being fulfilled. Less expectedly, his words seemed nearly as pertinent to a performance held on the same night at the Center for Improvisational Music, or CIM, a nonprofit educational effort run by the trumpeter Ralph Alessi near the northern stretch of the Gowanus Canal.

It featured the alto saxophonist Tim Berne, one of the early homesteaders of the newly ascendant Brooklyn jazz community. Mr. Berne long ago claimed ownership of his music's means of production with a self-sustaining record label based in a brownstone near Flatbush Avenue. And he has spent most of his career on the alternative fringe of jazz culture, though his audience at CIM included a couple of industry veterans like Jeff Levenson, who has a working affiliation with the Blue Note, one of New York's most obvious mainstream jazz institutions.

"Brooklyn is essentially an incubator, where a lot of things get messed with and hybridized," Mr. Levenson said later, speaking as an almost 30-year resident of the borough. "I think an audience approaches that experience differently than the audience that comes to the Blue Note. There's a different agenda, a different motivation. We're talking works in progress, which moderates the expectation levels."

A good many Brooklyn musicians would agree with that characterization, which casts the borough's jazz scene almost in the role of a loose-and-limber Triple-A baseball team. (Higher in the pecking order than the Class A Brooklyn Cyclones, anyway.) But the idea probably wouldn't sit well with Mr. Abdullah, who sees community-based creative action as a goal in itself.

Nor for different reasons would it agree with the percussionist Matt Moran, who leads Slavic Soul Party, an improviser-stocked Balkan brass band that performs on Tuesdays at Barbès, after Ms. Scheinman. "Maybe this started out as a place where people workshop things," Mr. Moran said outside the club recently, between sets. "But it's on the radar now, and you need to step up and present your work in the best possible light."

"It has really arrived as a scene," he continued, gathering steam. "People are saying, 'I'm not going to step into the shininess of Manhattan, I'm going to do it in my own earthy way.' And rather than struggling in obscurity, they're finding that now it's a celebrated thing."

Mightier Than the Board - co-op

By TERI KARUSH ROGERS

Published: May 28, 2006

IN New York City, letters of recommendation are part of the hazing ritual known as a board package, whereby a buyer must convince a co-op board that he or she would make a worthy neighbor. But in this era of cellphones and instant messaging, formal letters of recommendation solicited from friends and associates can seem as quaint as cucumber sandwiches, with buyers and writers alike tempted to treat them as crustless formalities.

Ruby Washington/The New York Times

Angel Franco/The New York Times

When Susan Ruttner read, “Both applicants are of the highest moral turpitude,” she thought it was a joke.

"It's not really a blowoff," said Joan Sacks, an associate broker at Stribling who sits on the board of her white-glove building at 45 Sutton Place South. "Many people believe falsely the letters will never be considered, because who would ask for one from someone who would give a bad one. But the quality of the letters will speak to the kinds of people the applicant knows, their ability to write well, and most importantly, the ability to provide a sense at a personal level what the applicant and his family are like."

Boards typically require three to six letters from friends, employers and professional colleagues. And depending on the building and the candidate, the letter-writing ritual can make the difference between acceptance and rejection. But, brokers lament, letters of recommendation continue to be chronically misunderstood, occasionally faked and frequently bungled — sometimes to comic effect.

Consider the reference submitted by a lawyer on behalf of a couple buying a one-bedroom pied-à-terre a few years ago. "Both applicants are of the highest moral turpitude," he wrote.

"I read it three times to myself, saying 'This has got to be a joke,' " said Susan Ruttner, a senior vice president of Halstead Property who, as the seller's agent, reviewed the board package before it was submitted. The writer was asked for a revision.

"I get a new one faxed to me a month later that says: 'I purchased a dictionary for my secretary. Sorry for the previous effort,' " Ms. Ruttner said. "He changed it to 'of the highest moral character.' "

The inadvertently maligned buyers got the apartment.

Sometimes, the letters really are intended as jokes — ones that are not always recognized until it is nearly too late. When an actor asked a comedian friend for a reference, he said that the actor "sleeps all day, and he's really very quiet, even at night when he practices the piano at 3 in the morning, and he's actually very talented," said Michele Kleier, the chairwoman of Gumley Haft Kleier. The letter slipped by the buyer's broker and would have gone into the board package if Ms. Kleier, the seller's broker, hadn't noticed something amiss. "About four days later, the real letter arrived," Ms. Kleier said.

Less amusing, she said, was a reference on behalf of a couple buying one of her listed apartments. "It was very long and started out beautifully," she recalled, "and toward the end there was a paragraph about how wonderful these people were in the face of adversity — that after three bankruptcies, they landed on their feet each time and only did better, and now their lives had turned around. And I said, 'Oh my God, who wants to have someone in their building who has had three bankruptcies?' "

It is also unwise to bring up a candidate's penchant for entertaining or for cooking pungent-smelling foods. JoAnne Kennedy, the chief operating officer of Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy, said that other instances of innocent sabotage involve statements like "they train pit bulls and have five grandchildren that they like to take care of."

She also bemoaned references to "things that are absolutely off the wall — like gun collections."

"I mean, gun collecting is an honorable pastime in some parts of the world," she said. "But New Yorkers don't collect guns; they collect art."

Obvious miscues like these rarely make it to the board. They wind up in rewrite or in a dead-letter file after the brokers have vetted them. But plenty of people submit brief, pro forma letters that brokers can do little about if the writer is unwilling to try again.

These terse cookie-cutter letters bespeak a maladroit candidate who doesn't play well with others, particularly when they are from social references.

"The last thing you want in a package is four letters, each of which is two-sentence paragraphs," said Frederick Peters, president of Warburg Realty, who was the president of his board on Central Park West for five years. "That makes a really bad impression. When I was a board president, what I thought was that people couldn't really be bothered. And I think that says something about how they feel about the applicant."

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Anthony vanEyck Miller defended the common practice of distributing sample letters, to give prospective references an idea of what’s expected.

The tone and content of the ideal letter vary according to the building. An astute broker can tell you whether a chatty, sophisticated or businesslike approach will work best.

But all letters should describe through specific examples "people who have a solid base in society in terms of relationships," said Judith H. Saunders, a senior vice president of Halstead. "They show that you can get along with people, accommodate yourself to other people's needs, and you're not going to make unreasonable demands."

A reference from a fellow volunteer, for example, should say "not just that you sit on the board, but that you worked tirelessly to raise money for X and painted the playground," said Laura Matiz, an executive vice president of Bellmarc Realty.

While stock phrases like "financially prudent," "quietly reliable" and "excellent reputation" have their uses, they are no substitute for personal and powerful storytelling. "I've had other board members tell me they've been moved to tears on more than one occasion by beautiful letters of a beautiful friendship," said Maury Solomon, an associate broker at Halstead and former board member at an Upper West Side building.

Ms. Sacks recalled the stirring recommendation she recently read "from a woman who met her next-door neighbors"— the buyers — "because of 9/11. She lived alone and was absolutely terrified to come out of her apartment. Her next-door neighbors made it a point to ring her doorbell and make sure she was all right and befriended her and really helped her get through that kind of trauma."

While some board members are motivated mostly by curiosity, satisfying it can be tantamount to a red carpet at the board interview, the final and traditionally most feared part of the application process.

"We're all very nosy people," Ms. Kennedy said. "Look at all the reality shows on television. And when you know another person's story, you then learn how to connect with them."

Of course, in New York, who is writing can be as important as what they say.

"Sometimes a building wants to know who the letters are from before the application review," said Margaret Furniss, a vice president of Stribling, referring to certain buildings in the white-glove category, including those that expect handwritten letters on engraved stationery. "They want to make sure the buyers know people who live in the same sort of co-ops. And they want a snapshot profile of who the person is. What kind of world do they live in?"

At other times, it's the seller who may be gun-shy. Last year, Ms. Matiz helped sell a $2.5 million apartment on Park Avenue after the board had already turned down one pair of financially qualified buyers, raising suspicions of a "social" turndown. "The seller's agent would not look at our financials until they knew who the letter writers were," Ms. Matiz said. "I gave them very wealthy C.E.O.'s who all lived on Park Avenue."

In a slightly different wrinkle, a seller's broker weighing competing bids may ask for the names of the letter writers to help identify the offer most likely to pass the board.

The "right" names depend on the personality of the building. "Different buildings are looking for different things," said Mr. Peters, Warburg's president. "There are some buildings which are quite clubby, and they want letters from people they know, so you have to figure out who's on the board, what they do, and figure out if you know someone who knows them."

(On the other hand, brokers warn, don't ask someone who barely knows you, even a famous someone, to write a recommendation, and think carefully before including one of your potential neighbors. "You don't know whether they are really well liked or not," said Mr. Solomon of Halstead.)

So can reference letters really torpedo an application?

Occasionally, yes.

"We had at least one experience on my board that I can recall in which the letters hinted to us at stuff that we then did more research to find out, which led us to conclude that the candidate was not right for us," Mr. Peters said, referring to his Central Park West board.

Much more commonly, great letters can push a buyer with so-so financials across the finish line.

"If it's a business recommendation and that letter is saying John Jones is a highly competent employee and his future with our company is excellent, that, of course, becomes very significant in weighing that applicant," said Ms. Sacks of Stribling.

Similarly, Ms. Furniss, her colleague at Stribling, said: "If you have an entry-level couple and their finances are sort of on the edge, if their letters all say they're honest and straightforward and always meet their obligations personally and financially, that can tip it right over into their favor. A lot of boards are interested in having smart young people on their way up in the building and will give a leg up to people like that."

What if you are quiet, honest and reasonably solvent but keep to yourself? This is not the moment to abandon type and forge a set of letters, at least not in the traditional sense.

Some boards actually check references, especially on the Upper East Side. "Your 10 percent deposit can be lost that quickly," Mr. Solomon said.

But there are legitimized types of fakery — for example, when references say they will sign whatever you write (or when a script-doctoring broker offers to "fill out" an awkward or anemic letter). While this is not cause for disqualification, it can backfire by producing a subpar letter.

"You always get better references from someone else than one you write yourself," said Ms. Saunders of Halstead. "People writing their own letters and asking a friend to sign it are less likely to have personal detail quality."

Plagiarism is another problem and often can be traced to the sample letters brokers hand out. "Then, the danger is that everybody uses it, and you get four letters back, and all of them have the same middle paragraph," Mr. Peters said.

Anthony vanEyck Miller, a vice president of Bellmarc, defended the widespread practice of distributing examples. "In this age of e-mails, many college-educated people do not know how to write well," he said, "and they don't know how to construct a letter. With a sample, they get the idea."

Sometimes, a board confronting a sheaf of clonish or skeletal letters will ask for a new and improved set. But if a candidate's finances are excellent, money will usually speak louder than words.

"At the end of the day, it's the finances of the buyer that count," said Mr. Miller, a veteran of two boards. "The reference letters simply legitimize whatever conclusions the board might have already reached by view of the financial statements."

Regardless of the outcome, a board package containing detailed and moving references may carry sentimental value.

"It's like a little time capsule," said Meg Siegel, a senior vice president of Sotheby's International Realty and the president of her SoHo board for five years. "A friend or associate who writes a wonderful letter for you — it's a wonderful marking of time, of where you are at this point in your life. It's kind of like a complete packet that really sums up who this person really is. And it's pretty accurate."

In a Tiny Queens Apartment, 70 Cats Gone, and 28 to Go

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

The cats scurry under the bed when visitors arrive. Most of them are the products of inbreeding and have similar markings.

By COREY KILGANNON

Published: May 1, 2006

"Any evil intention against my cats and me, will come back to you, three times three."

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Melanie Neer will be allowed to keep 2 of her 30 cats in her studio apartment in Queens. She once had 100.

Thus spoke the witch of Elmhurst last week, casting a protective spell over her coven of cats — 30 strong, but shrinking by the day — living in the rent-controlled studio apartment she shares with her mother on 80th Street in Queens.

The witch happens to be Melanie Neer, 50, a student of the principles of Wicca and Harry Potter.

The evil intention happens to be an eviction order from her landlord, who has long complained about the intense cat odor coming from the apartment.

Although it is against Wiccan principles to put a harmful spell upon others, Ms. Neer said as she took out a special candle used for "super-duper protection spells," one may cast a boomerang spell on a harmful person to so that the harm comes back to him.

But while she has managed to stave off eviction thus far, the witchcraft is not working wonders on the cat front.

Thirty cats in a cramped apartment may seem like a lot, but five years ago, the Neers had 100 in there and CNN showed up to cover the story. The publicity led people and rescue groups to adopt dozens of the cats. But the Neers are obligated by an agreement with their landlord to trim the herd to two.

Workers arrive daily now from Animal Care and Control of New York City to remove another cat or two. If the collected cats are not adopted, they are killed.

The floors were scrubbed down to bare wood and the wooden furniture clawed into scratching posts. A heavy cat smell filled the small space, despite two window fans on full blast.

Melanie sat with her mother, Barbaralee Neer, 73, a retired bank receptionist who has esophageal cancer and needs constant attention. Since no home health attendant is willing to work in the house, Melanie fills that role.

Melanie lit a cigarette and recalled that they had just nine cats in 1992. Some were not spayed or neutered, and things soon got out of control.

"That's her, she started the mess," she said, pointing to Whoopee, a 13-year-old cat who strolled into the room. Her litter spawned most of the cats, Melanie explained.

Barbaralee sat in her overcoat and a pair of thick boots and watched as Melanie pulled out papers showing that the landlord, Antonio Feggoudakis, was seeking her eviction. Michael S. Schnitzer, Mr. Feggoudakis's lawyer, said last night that eviction was a last-resort effort to "cure a health and safety problem, keep the integrity of the building and look out for the other tenants," since the Neers broke a 2001 agreement to keep only two cats.

When the Neers moved in 45 years ago, they paid $86 a month. Now they pay $521, they said. Melanie receives disability and Barbara lives on her pension and Social Security checks. The cat costs sap it all and they live hand to mouth, they said.