Jazz Bakery

The Jazz Bakery, a staple of the L.A. music community, will close its doors Sunday after losing its lease, but owner Ruth Price insists it's too early to write a eulogy for the club, which has occupied the same space at the Helms Bakery District in Culver City for the last 16 years. "I've been really stressing the word moving, not closing," she said. "But it's been really hard to get people's mind-set away from the most dramatic thing they can think of. It is pretty dramatic any way you look at it, frankly."

In another blow for L.A. music fans, the Van Nuys jazz club Charlie O's abruptly closed this week after 11 years of shows by a roster of veteran local players and touring musicians. A brief statement on the club's website attributed the decision "to the state of the economy. " The final presentation was Wednesday night. The announcement leaves another empty space in an already sparse landscape for clubs in L.A. where fans can catch live jazz on a weekly basis, which include Hollywood's Catalina Bar & Grill, Little Tokyo's Blue Whale, Vitello's and the Baked Potato in Studio City.

The Jazz Bakery is a nonprofit organization. To followers of the scene, that statement is a redundancy, of course. In Los Angeles, saying a jazz club doesn't make money is like saying a restaurant doesn't serve scrap iron. In 18 years as president and artistic director of the Jazz Bakery, Ruth Price has always known that fresh music doesn't translate into hefty profits. Lately, though, Price has found it harder to offer quality at a discount. Last May, the Jazz Bakery lost its space in Culver City's old Helms Bakery complex when its philanthropic landlord, Wally Marx Jr., died.

In a major step toward the return of the Jazz Bakery, the itinerant jazz venue has found a new home in downtown Culver City and is moving forward with ambitious plans for the space. This week the Bakery, which has been homeless since 2009, has seen the convergence of two key elements that began coming together last summer. The first was a $2-million seed grant from the Annenberg Foundation, and the other was an agreement with the Culver City Redevelopment Agency, which approved the club for exclusive negotiation rights to develop a vacant property at 9814 Washington Blvd.

Wistful notes continue to flow at the Jazz Bakery. But their spontaneous and tuneful cadence will soon be idle as the club, one of L.A.'s most venerable jazz institutions, prepares to close its Culver City location May 31. "The one sure thing is that we're definitely reopening in the fall," Ruth Price, proprietor of the nonprofit club and a former jazz vocalist, told The Times Friday -- although where that will be no one knows.

In a major step toward the return of the Jazz Bakery, the itinerant jazz venue has found a new home in downtown Culver City and is moving forward with ambitious plans for the space. This week the Bakery, which has been homeless since 2009, has seen the convergence of two key elements that began coming together last summer. The first was a $2-million seed grant from the Annenberg Foundation, and the other was an agreement with the Culver City Redevelopment Agency, which approved the club for exclusive negotiation rights to develop a vacant property at 9814 Washington Blvd.

"Sing! Sing! Sing!," the audience-participatory adult sing-along at the Jazz Bakery, will depart from its usual American standards program to present "Into the Words," the music of Stephen Sondheim, on Sunday at 4 p.m. Admission is $12. Information: (310) 546-5470.

The Los Angeles Jazz Society and the Jazz Bakery are co-sponsoring a tribute to Shelly Manne Sunday at 8 p.m. at the club, 3233 Helms Ave., Culver City. Such compatriots of the late drummer as Chuck Berghofer, Conte Candoli, Gary Foster, Joe La Barbera, Mike Wofford and Jazz Bakery owner Ruth Price will be among those performing Manne's original arrangements, provided by his widow, Flip.

Mondays have traditionally been big-band nights at many jazz clubs. The reasons are obvious: It's usually an off night in terms of employment for most players; club owners like the idea of having a high-visibility attraction for a traditionally low-attendance evening; and musicians are willing to show up for the pleasure of playing in a large ensemble (not for the big bucks, because, sadly, the payment is minimal).

The adult sing-along, Sing! Sing! Sing!, at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City, will present "Partners in Crime: The Songs of Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer," Sunday at 4 p.m., with narration by Howard Lewis. $15. Information: (310) 546-5470.

Jazz Bakery's Movable Feast Where: Musicians Institute, 1655 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood When: 8 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday Price: $25 general; $15 students (21 and younger with ID) Info: www.jazzbakery.com

The Jazz Bakery is a nonprofit organization. To followers of the scene, that statement is a redundancy, of course. In Los Angeles, saying a jazz club doesn't make money is like saying a restaurant doesn't serve scrap iron. In 18 years as president and artistic director of the Jazz Bakery, Ruth Price has always known that fresh music doesn't translate into hefty profits. Lately, though, Price has found it harder to offer quality at a discount. Last May, the Jazz Bakery lost its space in Culver City's old Helms Bakery complex when its philanthropic landlord, Wally Marx Jr., died.

It's a quiet Sunday evening and the sun is falling gently over Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock. A few stragglers are typing on laptops at a corner cafe, and a steady stream of customers is visiting a nearby video store. Inside the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts, however, saxophonist Jason Robinson is calling down the heavens. Offering up throaty, impassioned improvisations that recall Roscoe Mitchell and John Coltrane, San Diego resident Robinson is working a small but devoted crowd hunched forward in metal folding chairs.

I couldn't care less that the Jazz Bakery is moving ["Jazz Bakery in Play," by Chris Barton, May 30]. I used to visit the place regularly when they featured mainstream musicians like Scott Hamilton, Ken Peplowski and Bob Wilber who played melodious songs written by qualified professional composers like Gershwin, Porter, Ellington, Arlen and Rodgers and Hart. I stopped going to the Jazz Bakery when its featured musicians spent practically the entire evening playing their "original compositions," usually an irritating array of tuneless, cacophonous numbers created to show the audience how many notes they can play in less than a minute.

UNDERRATED The Jazz Bakery: We desperately hope that this isn't a "don't know what you got till it's gone" situation and that this intimate, reverent little music hall finds a new home -- soon. It's not a terribly good time for music, but here's to this room beating the odds and coming back better than ever before. May the Bakery rise again. Vincent on 'Lost': Even after mulling it a while, we're still baffled about what's going on with those time-traveling castaways.

The Jazz Bakery, a staple of the L.A. music community, will close its doors Sunday after losing its lease, but owner Ruth Price insists it's too early to write a eulogy for the club, which has occupied the same space at the Helms Bakery District in Culver City for the last 16 years. "I've been really stressing the word moving, not closing," she said. "But it's been really hard to get people's mind-set away from the most dramatic thing they can think of. It is pretty dramatic any way you look at it, frankly."

Pianist Andrew Hill has always traveled through jazz on his own path, at his own speed, and in his own good time. From the release of his first albums in the '60s to the present, he has been a musical outsider, taking what he feels he can use from the jazz mainstream, employing it in a fashion that satisfies his own singular creative vision.

Delfeayo Marsalis, the 27-year-old trombonist and composer, was in town during the weekend, leading a sextet Friday and Saturday at the Jazz Bakery. What Branford and Wynton have accomplished for the saxophone and trumpet, the younger brother seems to have achieved on the trombone. His sometimes fierce, burning flurries at up-tempos contrast with a ballad personality that adjusts itself lyrically to "Misty" and "But Beautiful."

When Omar Sosa walked onstage at the Jazz Bakery on Thursday evening, magisterially dressed in head-to-toe white, he carried with him a candle in one hand and a small carved deity in the other. Then, seated before his piano, he began tapping out notes in tandem with percussionist John Santos' extraordinary melange of found and sampled sounds, including cymbals, chimes, a cellphone ring tone and a child's music box playing "Frere Jacques."

Wistful notes continue to flow at the Jazz Bakery. But their spontaneous and tuneful cadence will soon be idle as the club, one of L.A.'s most venerable jazz institutions, prepares to close its Culver City location May 31. "The one sure thing is that we're definitely reopening in the fall," Ruth Price, proprietor of the nonprofit club and a former jazz vocalist, told The Times Friday -- although where that will be no one knows.