The Village Vanguard’s Reopening Notes

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Tuesday night’s performance at the historic club by Ron Miles is just one of many exciting shows in the jazz world as it re-emerges in the wake of Covid-19

Jason Moran, Ron Miles and Thomas Morgan performing at the Village Vanguard on Tuesday

PHOTO: ALAN NAHIGIAN

On Tuesday night, when trumpeter Ron Miles opened a six-night engagement at the Village Vanguard, the music’s gradually coalescing parts sounded at first fitful but then thoughtfully ordered. They invited concentration. The Vanguard, the city’s oldest continuously operated jazz club, was built for such deep, in-person listening. Yet its red double doors had been closed to patrons for 18 months, a clear reminder of the arrested state of affairs since the Covid-19 crisis gripped us. The mood in Tuesday’s full house was a mixture of reverence, relief and joy, all of which seemed contained in Mr. Miles’s buoyant yet restrained tone.

Jazz before a live audience was back in this celebrated Greenwich Village basement, its return showcased not with fanfare but rather by what has always drawn and held listeners here: the intimacy, surprise and grace of each shared musical moment.

The famed Village Vanguard

Photo: Michael Larson/Associated Press

One obvious sign of the pandemic: Three of the five musicians onstage wore masks, as did many audience members. Nearly invisible, however, to all but the longtime regulars were several changes made to the Vanguard since it was last open. Before the set, Deborah Gordon —who took over running the club full time after her mother, Lorraine, died in 2018—pointed out the handsome new mahogany bar that replaced the old black Formica one. That red tape affixed to a floor, which pointed the way to the men’s room? Gone. Most important—airflow being the priority these days—a new HVAC system had been installed. 

After one solo by pianist Jason Moran, fellow pianist Fred Hersch nodded approvingly from his audience seat. He reacted not just to Mr. Moran’s inventiveness but also to the sound of the new Steinway B grand piano that Mr. Hersch, who has recorded five albums at the Vanguard and will perform there Oct. 19-24, picked out. 

Robert Glasper performs at Blue Note Jazz Club in June

Photo: Johnny Nunez/WireImage/Getty Images

As elements of normalcy have returned to our lives in recent months, so has live, in-person jazz, in each case sparking renewed appreciation. In May, pianist Arturo O’Farrill spoke of “rediscovering the sacredness of the bandstand” before leading his Afro Latin Jazz Ensemble at Drom, in Manhattan’s East Village. The group, whose power and dexterity rival Mr. O’Farrill’s better-known orchestra, will be on display each Sunday this fall at Birdland. When pianist Robert Glasper reopened the Blue Note club in mid-June, he essayed his customarily wide range of influences, from jazz to pop to hip-hop, and invited celebrity friends—including rapper Common and comedians Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock—to join him onstage. In between songs, Mr. Glasper talked about vaccinations (now a requirement at New York venues) as well as the energy transmitted between musicians and audience (“medicine we all need,” he said). Mr. Glasper will return to the Blue Note for an extended fall residency—66 shows with varying lineups across 33 nights—Oct. 1 through Nov. 7. 

In late July, the 25th annual Vision Festival, this country’s essential gathering of avant-garde improvising musicians, began at Brooklyn’s Pioneer Works with a healing ceremony and a concert lineup that featured the Matthew Shipp String Trio, in which the celebrated pianist blends his instrument with viola and bass to singular effect. The festival’s nonprofit organization, Arts for Art, presents a wide range of programming this fall in downtown Manhattan, including two different concert series at the Clemente, on the Lower East Side, beginning in October, and a free “In Gardens” series, through Oct. 3, featuring a duo performance (Sept. 18) that should play out like a conversation in several languages between master improvisers, with William Parker playing African instruments (guimbri and ngoni) and Cooper-Moore on a harp that he designed and built.

Mr. Parker, playing his more customary bass, will lead a stellar septet Sept. 23-24 at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club, which reopened to the public in mid-August. The organization, which has presented more than 1,000 digital performances during the pandemic, inaugurates a new season of live programming at its Rose Theater with “Wynton at 60,” a birthday celebration for trumpeter Wynton Marsalis highlighting his works in small and large ensembles.

The Jazz Gallery, in Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood, opened to limited audiences in January and now welcomes full-capacity seating; on Sept. 30, the club will host a new collective trio whose possibilities befit its name, the Unknowable, featuring multi-instrumentalists Dave Liebman, Adam Rudolph and Tyshawn Sorey. Two Greenwich Village sister clubs, Smalls and Mezzrow, were “on the ropes” last year, according to pianist Spike Wilner, who owns both venues. Now, newly eyeing sustainability, he marveled at “the resilience of the scene itself.” (Pianist Orrin Evans’s powerhouse Captain Black Big Band performs at Smalls on Sept. 28; rising-star pianist Sullivan Fortner leads a trio at Mezzrow on the 29th.) Revived jazz-club schedules also satisfy pent-up desires for long-awaited engagements, such as one at Le Poisson Rouge (Sept. 26) by pianist Vijay Iyer’s subtly provocative trio with Linda May Han Oh on bass and Mr. Sorey on drums.

Wherever jazz gets played in this country, signs of resilience are evident. On Sept. 23, San Francisco’s SFJazz begins its new season of full-capacity shows, which includes guitarist Pat Metheny, as popular a hero as jazz knows, leading his Side-Eye band (Sept. 25-26). The Monterey Jazz Festival, which was postponed, will take place Sept. 24-26, with pianist Herbie Hancock playing opening night. In New Orleans, a recovering jazz scene was shut down yet again by the power failures following Hurricane Ida. Yet it is regrouping as quickly as the lights turn back on; the French Quarter’s Preservation Hall, now celebrating its 60th year, returned to live music Wednesday night with an all-star band featuring trumpeter Wendell Brunious.

On Tuesday at the Vanguard, Mr. Miles introduced one intricate yet smoothly swinging original composition, “Binder,” mentioning “the things that keep us all together.” It was hard not to consider a feeling of community that some lament as absent from jazz these days but which just then seemed palpable. After the set, Ms. Gordon said: “I woke up this morning with the strangest feeling. Then I realized what it was: Hope.”