Jazzing It Up in Boulder
10 Dec 2015
Just as there’s a range of ideas about what “jazz” means, Boulder County has developed a range of ideas about what constitutes a jazz venue.
By Charmaine Ortega Getz From elegant hotels to quirky bars, fine-dining establishments to coffeehouses, some variety of live jazz is playing somewhere in and around Boulder almost any day of the week: instrumental and vocal, standards, original compositions, swing, Latin, Afro-Cuban, fusions and more. And for the truly serious, be-quiet-I’m-listening crowd, there’s Jazz at the Dairy, a dedicated concert space for stellar professionals. Or CU Boulder’s concert halls, where the latest crop of jazz-studies students are the stars.
Continuing the Legacy
Today, the Boulder area continues to produce and attract outstanding jazz musicians. When Boulder restaurateur Suter DuBose looked to expand his passion for food, wine, community and music at Caffè Sole about five years ago, he was astonished by the local roster.
The Different Faces of Jazz
What Will You Catch?
When casting your net to see what’s playing in Boulder County, the best catches of the week may be found on calendars maintained by dedicated jazz fans such as Christine Robertson and Kevin McInness. Robertson grew up in Colorado and after some years away returned to settle in Boulder in 2007. Fresh from the San Francisco jazz-club scene, she learned to appreciate the music while dancing to swing and tango. “I was very impressed by the quality of musicians here, but the venues weren’t ideal,” she says. “I missed the energy where people are really listening to the musicians. That’s the energy the musicians take and then go in different directions. It evokes the best [from them].” To foster that connection, Robertson realized, the jazz community needed more information. In the summer of 2013, she started Christine’s Jazz Picks, an email list of jazz fans and musicians, with a calendar of Boulder performances and jazz event news. The list has swelled to more than 1,000 names, she says. She also sponsored house concerts, passing the hat for donations that didn’t always reimburse expenses but led to a new idea for “party jams,” events where musicians could play informally and fans could bring potluck items and a few bucks to rent the recital room at the Boulder Piano Gallery on Walnut Street.
What’s Happening in Jazz Christine’s Jazz Picks: www.jazzinboulder.com Jazz at the Dairy: https://tickets.thedairy.org Jazz Ensemble Performances, CU College of Music: www.colorado. edu/music/ensembles/jazz Jazz Northern Colorado: www.jazznoco.comWhile Robertson prefers to keep her focus on Boulder’s jazz scene, she gladly refers anyone looking farther afield to fellow fan McInness. He balances his paying gig as a RE/MAX realtor with his labor of love: Jazz Northern Colorado, a website that covers venues from Boulder to Fort Collins and Greeley. “It started four years ago when the real-estate market was depressed, and I had more time on my hands,” McInness confesses. “I saw this online calendar in New Mexico called Jazz Santa Fe and knew we had to have something like this in northern Colorado.” His personal favorite venues are CU Boulder’s concert halls, where students and professors perform at a level he calls “fantastic, every bit as good if not better than what you find in the club scene.” Of course, in Boulder County, the jazz “club scene” might not be what you think.
Charmaine Ortega Getz is a freelance journalist and author of Weird Colorado: Your Travel Guide to Colorado’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. Her blog, WeirdColorado.net, is periodically updated with Colorado’s most unusual history.
