Dinner, drinks and a set at Birdaland? Yes, please. The music that escapes from the horns gallops jubilant circles around the tightly spaced tables.
A bottle of wine is poured. A woman tips her head back and laughs. A pair of lovers clasp tattoo covered hands and smile. Beside me, my three and a half year old date, sips cranberry juice out of a tumbler and places his cloth napkin roll to his lips to emulate his father's trombone solo.
This past week, my wildly talented husband who plays for The Legendary Count Basie Orchestra spent the week with his fellow musicians playing at Birdland in New York.
As the wife of a musician, I've been in and out of numerous clubs, venues and performance spaces.
Jazz clubs, intimate, mysterious, melancholy, hopeful, I thoroughly enjoy. They're one of the few places where people get dressed up to hear live music. It's a lost grace. Dining, drinking, enjoying the bygone glamor of big band swing- it's magical. In few places, is it as magical as it is at Birdland.
Where other venues can tend towards pretentious and stuffy, Birdland holds to the expression and passion of jazz. Audience participation, dancing, the having of a good time are all encouraged.
The audience at Birdland, your fellow table neighbors, they're freer, giddier. Birdland is a true jazz lovers hangout.
You can even, if you are brave enough, bring your three year old. Mine has been to so many jazz clubs, he hums the genius of Dizzy, Miles, Basie, Coltrane and Ellington the way most kids his age sing Old MacDonald. If you too have and old soul on your hands, they are welcome at Birdland.
Dinner, drinks and a set at Birdland is a great way to experience American Classical Music
(aka Jazz) in the city that helped build and re-invent the art form.
In a world that moves so quickly, that has become over saturated in technology, it's a comfort to know that one can step into Birdland and step back in time- getting lost in a space, in music that is as timeless and soul stirring today as it was when it was first imagined.
315 West 44th St
New York, NY 10036