For the past year, D.C. jazz musicians have traded the warm environs of local performance spaces for the isolation of their living rooms, forced to channel the energy of an improvised solo through a WiFi signal. And while they and other community members wait for COVID-19 restrictions to lift, they’re grappling with the stark reality that some of these sacred stages won’t be there when the wait is over.
The city’s jazz clubs, many of which had closed pre-pandemic, grew even more scarce in the past 12 months, with the closures of Sotto, Twins, and Alice’s Jazz and Cultural Society, among others. In folding, they seem to accelerate a steady stream of closures over the past decade — including storied venues like Bohemian Caverns, HR-57 and Utopia – and leave Blues Alley, which is currently looking for a new home, the sole full-time jazz club in the city.
What the city is losing in their absence is profound: interactions with the people who ran them, the experiences they provided, and the vitality of the music itself.
Alice’s, crafted in a Brookland building that served in several retail roles before lying dormant for decades, opened in 2015. Co-founder DeAndrey Howard, a trumpeter and percussionist, spent nearly five years reincarnating the space.
“I put all my life force into this joint,” says Howard, who also lives upstairs. “Everybody who saw this place, when they ride by and see it today and then they come in and see the inside up and down, their mouth is hanging open.”
But with a host of challenges in the past few years— including health complications for the club’s co-founder, Alice Jamison, and Howard’s own medical issues exacerbated during the pandemic — Howard, 67, announced in December that the club was closing.
While the federal government has made some funding for independent businesses available – most notably through Paycheck Protection Program loans – music venues were largely ineligible to receive that money, intensifying their financial strain. (As a result of the months-long lobbying effort from a consortium of 3,000-plus venues nationwide, a new $16.25 billion federal program will offer grants of up to $10 million later this year.) D.C. also created a $29.5 million Entertainment Bridge Fund for venues and supporting businesses, receiving more than 350 submissions before the application window closed, according to the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.
Another casualty in the past year is Twins, a major U Street venue known, in part, for the kindness and tenacity of its proprietors, twin sisters Kelly and Maze Tesfaye. After shepherding it for more than 30 years, the Tesfayes announced the club’s closure in August. Bar manager Wendy Whittington says she was hired “on the spot” in 2002 and never left, naming “loyalty” as her reason for staying.
“I love the twins; they are really fabulous ladies,” she says. “They’re like my family.”
For many local performers, clubs like Twins offered a formative performance experience. D.C.-based vocalist Sharón Clark, who has performed on stages from New York’s Iridium to the Moscow International House of Music, found her footing as a jazz artist at D.C. clubs in the 1980s. She recalls gigs at the original Twins location in Brightwood, a small space where “everyone smoked,” the piano was often out of tune, and musicians took breaks in the kitchen.
“It was a training ground,” Clark says. “Those days at Twins — I think they really shaped my life in a lot of ways.”
Several venues that don’t derive all their income from ticket sales or own their real estate have managed to hang on. Mr. Henry’s is a Capitol Hill restaurant that offered Roberta Flack a residency in the late 1960s – her debut album cover image was taken there – and regularly hosted the Capitol Hill Jazz Jam in pre-COVID times. The pub has kept the music going with virtual concerts, and plans to resume the in-person variety as soon as restrictions lift. General manager Cathy Nagy says she’s been asked whether Mr. Henry’s might stand to gain from the closure of other clubs.
“I really do believe that a rising tide raises all ships,” Nagy says. “I hope that either these jazz clubs that have had to close can reopen or recreate themselves, and we can all share with each other.”
Howard from Alice’s Jazz and Cultural Society, for one, suggests that the venue could return down the road, and he remains confident that new venues eventually will emerge from the shells of old ones. “New places will open up, but it’s the people who will run the club,” he predicts. “What made this club successful [is] it was built and it was run by a jazz musician.”
For the musicians that regularly inhabit these spaces, the dwindling number of venues sparks unease about the long-term impact on the city’s rich jazz culture. Nasar Abadey, a percussionist, composer and jazz lecturer at the Peabody Institute, recalls the jazz scene of the late 1970s, when he moved to the District.
In those days, Abadey listened to WPFW all day and ventured out to clubs such as Top O’Foolery, Harold’s Rogue and Jar, and D.C. Space at night.
“Many times, you had to let some music go because you couldn’t catch all of it,” Abadey says.
Abadey has taken part in the twice-weekly meetings of the DMV Music Stakeholders, a coalition of performers, venue owners and activists that has urged the D.C. Council to bring venues additional relief. While he is heartened by the efforts of those who are invested in the future of D.C.’s live music scene, he remains worried it may not be enough to secure a vibrant future for local jazz.
“I’m very concerned. I’m 73 years old, and I have an energy that is still like a 25-, 30-year-old with this music, and so I still intend to be as active as I can,” says Abadey, who has continued to compose, teach, and practice over the past year. “But we can only be [that] active if there are venues for us to perform in.”