And All that Jazz

Jack Wilkins, photo courtesy of benedettoguitars.com.

Jazz venues few, but fervent in North Jersey
Friday, March 30, 2007

By EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER

Two men tuned up their guitars in the back corner of the Glen Rock Inn. With no fanfare, the musicians sat down on two dining table chairs and begin plucking softly, building the layers of sound in a sweet, swinging rhythm, slow-cooking the music until they hit uptempo arpeggios and smooth licks. It was seven o'clock: dinnertime at the small family restaurant.

Glen Rock resident Chris Connolly was finishing up dinner with his two children, 5-year-old Megan and 2-year-old Quinn, when he noticed that they were interested in the music. He took them to the back of the room, where they stood mesmerized within inches of the guitars. Even when Connolly brought them back to the table for dessert, Megan took Quinn by the hand, and the two walked toward the music as if it were the song of the Pied Piper.

"That's what makes it all worth it," whispered Shelly Rosenberg of Elmwood Park, who booked jazz guitar headliners Jack Wilkins and Howard Alden for this unheralded gig. "This is how you introduce kids to jazz."

For the past seven years, Rosenberg has booked jazz musicians Thursday nights at the Glen Rock Inn.


The Glen Rock Inn. Courtesy of ardore.com.

"These are world-class musicians, and you can hear them for the price of a meal," said Gregory Taylor of Hackensack. That evening, Taylor was there with friends Bruno Corry of Edison and Paul Loubriel of New Milford. The three meet at the inn about once a month.

"If you're a guitar insider, these guys are as good as it gets," said Corry, an amateur guitarist.

A select group of aficionados has found a watering hole here, but Bergen County in general is a bit of a jazz desert. In Montclair, West Orange and Madison there are additional options, but in Bergen, with New York City a stone's throw away, there seems to be little impetus to open up a jazz club. Most jazz available is performed weekly or twice weekly at restaurants like this one.

"This is the most expensive place in New Jersey, maybe even the country," said Amos Kaune, retired owner of the jazz club Gulliver's in West Paterson and Lincoln Park. "That makes it hard to open up a venue here."

Kaune ran his club for 18 years and booked jazz events at other venues for years after, but now just enjoys his evenings at the Glen Rock Inn.

"You may wonder what they're doing here," said Kaune, gesturing toward Wilkins and Alden. "But jazz players love to play. And there's a certain generosity of spirit. They'll play for what the owner can pay them."

For venue owners, live music can be central to grabbing a good crowd, especially on the weekends. Kaune discovered this as a first-time bar owner in 1960, when he bought the Clifton Tap Room. At the time, he intended to run a simple bar. But on the day of his grand opening, the chemical factory across the street went out of business, taking with it his primary clientele.

"We tried everything," he said of his efforts to attract new customers. "Finally we put in live jazz, and somehow it worked."


Photo credit: Chris Pedota for The Record. Teaneck resident Lauren Hooker: educator, mom, jazz chanteuse at Lounge Zen.

Jump forward 44 years to 2004, when David Nachman of Ridgewood and David Sindell of Guttenberg, both immigration lawyers, opened Lounge Zen in Teaneck. The lounge, which features art exhibits, French-Japanese fusion cuisine and an authentic sushi bar, added live jazz on Fridays about a year and a half ago.

"We didn't know early on what direction we were going," said Nachman, who grew up in Teaneck. "When we first opened up we had DJs twice a week, we had open-mike night, then we had bring your own record. Then we started doing jazz, and jazz really took off."

In January, Nachman and Sindell expanded jazz to Saturday nights.

"If we could do four or five nights of jazz a week, that would be wonderful!" said Nachman. "We've been to jazz clubs in [New York City], and we thought, we can do that better; we can serve sushi with the drinks until late."

Going to the Glen Rock Inn or Lounge Zen may not be the same thing as a night at the Village Vanguard or the Blue Note in Manhattan. But without the city traffic and the ensuing headache, an evening of North Jersey jazz can ease you into a swingin' weekend.
* * *

Bergen venues

• Glen Rock Inn, 222 Rock Road, Glen Rock; 201-652-7214. Jazz on Thursdays. Upcoming: Frank Vignola and Don Keiling; Muzzy and Tomoko Ono; Bucky Pizzarelli and Jerry Bruno.
• Lounge Zen, 254 Degraw Ave., Teaneck; 201-692-8585 or lounge-zen.com. Jazz on Fridays and Saturdays. Upcoming: Evan Toth Band; Etan Haziza Trio.

Venues elsewhere
• Trumpets, 6 Depot Square, Montclair; 973-744-2600 or trumpetsjazz.com. Jazz Tuesday through Sunday. Upcoming: Betty Liste Quartet, featuring Ted Curson on trumpet; Baron Raymonde, R&B saxophone.
• Cecil's, 364 Valley Road, West Orange; 973-736-4800 or cecilsjazzclub.com. Jazz seven nights a week. Upcoming: Eddie Allen and friends; Victor Jones-JB Project.
• Shanghai Jazz, 24 Main St., Madison; 973-822-2899 or shanghaijazz.com. Jazz Wednesday through Sunday. Upcoming: Ralph Douglas Quartet; David Gilmore Trio.
• Shades, 720 Monroe St., Hoboken; 888-374-2337 or shadesofhoboken.com. Jazz Thursday through Sunday. Upcoming: Roni Ben-Hur, Earl May and Charles Davis; Jim DeAngelis Quartet featuring Carrie Jackson and Tony Signa.
• The Priory, 233 W. Market St., Newark; 973-242-8012 or newcommunity.org. Jazz Friday evening and Sunday brunch. Gospel jazz every second Saturday. Upcoming: Lynette Sheard; Carrie Jackson.
• The Crossroads, 78 North Avenue, Garwood; 908-232-5666 or xxroads.com. Jazz jam every Tuesday led by organist Radam Schwartz.

Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.

Brooklyn is for (art) lovers...and feministas

Photo by Evelyn Shih. (Photo not available on northjersey.com)

Famous work anchors wing for feminist art
Friday, March 30, 2007

By EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER

Feminism may have a problem with history -- specifically, that it ignores herstory -- but it's beginning to accumulate a history of its own. The debut exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum's new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art show that it's also begun to create its own culture: an aesthetic of shock and self-realization.

Consider the central piece of the center, now on permanent exhibit: "The Dinner Party" (1974-1979), an installation by Judy Chicago that is considered the first epic feminist artwork.

Three long tables come together in an equilateral triangle, providing seats to 39 real and fictional women of influence and power, such as the goddess Ishtar and Susan B. Anthony, with ceremonious place settings, medieval chalices and plates hand-painted to symbolize their personas. The names of 999 additional women grace the white tiles of the floor. A low light in the triangular viewing room enshrines the names in a candlelight glow.

But this isn't the round table. This is the women's table, complete with goddesses, suffragettes, poets and queens. Viewed on a crowded day, the place settings are Olympian, worshiped by the masses. Viewed early in the morning, the emptiness is haunting. Where are the women who belong at those seats? Must they always be retrieved from the erasures of history?

Gender performances

From the perspective of the artists in "Global Feminisms," Chicago's work is history and part of their heritage. Of more than 100 international female artists featured, none was born before 1960. They came of age during or after the apex of the feminist epoch in the '60s and '70s.


Photo credit: Evelyn Shih. The roiling plate of Susan B. Anthony. That woman had some beef.

While Chicago's painted ceramic plates still shock the eye with clearly vaginal imagery clothed in the guise of flowers à la Georgia O'Keeffe, the younger artists pick up where she left off.

Instead of being eroticized or hidden, breast imagery is matter-of-fact, often the subject of stark photography and video art. Canan Senol from Turkey shows a video work, "Fountain," that frames a mother's breasts and shows the slow drip of milk with documentary precision. He Chengyao of China collects a photographic triptych in which a boy sits bare-chested for his portrait -- as do the mother and grandmother to his left, unashamed. American artist Mary Coble performs a painful video piece in which she repeatedly applies and removes duct tape from her alarmingly reddened breasts in a never-ending cycle of preserving her outward androgyny.

"Bind" by Ryoko Suzuki, Japan. Courtesy of brooklynmuseum.org.

The feminist idea of gender as performance pervades the exhibit. In one corner, Israeli artist Oreet Ashery exhibits photographs of herself dressed as an Orthodox Jewish man named Marcus Fisher, an experiment inspired by Marcel Duchamp's stint in cross-dressing as alter ego Rrose Selavy. One photograph shows Ashery holding her own revealed breast while suited up and mustached. On the opposite wall, Moroccan Latifa Echakhch cross-dresses as a young boy in "Pin-up," mimicking the pose from posters of Western male models during World War II. The catch: She's also dressed as a pious young Muslim, legs tucked submissively on the traditional prayer rug.

Having fun, too

The constant subversion of body image and identity can be exhausting to take in, but the exhibit also has a joyous side. Japanese artist Hiroko Okada photographs two men grinning cheekily at the camera, their thin frames naked and interrupted by large prosthetic pregnant bellies. Countrywoman Miwa Yanagi ages young women with makeup in her "My Grandmothers" series and celebrates older women in unexpectedly "young" photographed scenarios, such as joyriding on a motorcycle with a young man. Milena Dopitova of the Czech Republic shows two older women embracing with remarkable grace and sapphic intimacy in "Dance."

Perhaps the one central theme of "Global Feminisms" is that of a post-feminist self-awareness. These contemporary artists will not need to be retrieved -- on the contrary, they have retrieved their own womanhood. They will make their own spaces at the table.

E-mail: shih@northjersey.com

Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.

Post Number One

Hello. This is me.


I write for a dying institution: the print newspaper. This is my first job out of college, and I have to say, as far as first jobs go, it's not too shabby.

Ok, so the pay is mediocre.
But I'm not filing anything--except for my articles, of course--and I don't feel like going postal. At least, not yet.

(Seven months: enough to be chatting with friends on Gmail all day. Not quite enough to start playing solitaire.)

Anyway, I am starting this blog because my pile of articles is starting to lean. Here I will gather my articles in web format, for my own purposes, but also just in case you do not live in Bergen County, NJ and happen to be interested in reading my work. Please note that I will not reproduce articles that I have written up until now. When I have time, I will start posting archives, gathering articles by the month in the form of weblinks without the actual text.

I hope to launch a second blog in coming weeks, linked to this one, telling the story behind my stories. Although I am by no means a photojournalist, that blog will also feature pictures that I take on the job. (Check out my photoblog at http://octoberpoppies.aminus3.com.)

Happy reading!