Jazz Notes : Remodeled Catalina Bar to Open Thursday; N.Y.’s Blue Note Opens Branch in Tokyo

The Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood, which has become one of the area’s top jazz clubs, has been closed for renovation over the holidays. It reopens Thursday with the Cedar Walton Trio.

Owners Catalina and Bob Popescu have given the room a much-needed face lift by knocking down the enclosed stairway that runs down the middle of the club. The Popescus have turned the old two-room club into one large, spacious one. “Every night, people tell me, they can’t see the piano player or they can’t see the drummer, and now there will be a beautiful view of the bandstand from everywhere,” Catalina said.

The room has also been outfitted with a new sound system--a 12-track mixing board and a new set of loudspeakers (“With a bigger room, we need a bigger sound system”)--as well as new stage monitors, hung from the ceiling, for the performing artists.

EAST MEETS EAST: The Blue Note, the successful Manhattan jazz club that consistently presents the biggest names in the business--Sarah Vaughan, Phil Woods and Dizzy Gillespie are just three who have appeared there recently--has opened a Tokyo branch in the Minami-Aoyama district, the Sunset Strip of Japan’s largest city. “This is the first major franchise operation in the history of jazz,” according to Blue Note booking manager Bob Golden.

With such artists as Gillespie and Oscar Peterson on tap for next year, the franchise will be using “basically the same booking policy as our room,” Golden said. To follow up the Tokyo opening, the Blue Note is looking for other locations, Los Angeles among them. “At this moment, there are development discussions for a franchise in Los Angeles, but they’re still in the talking stages,” Golden added. Should you be planning to spend New Year’s Eve in Tokyo, the Blue Note offers Angelenos Harry (Sweets) Edison and John Collins, plus Monty Alexander and Pacquito D’Rivera.

BLUE NOTE MEETS TOWER: The New York-Tokyo club has also started a co-promotion with a Tower Records’ Manhattan branch dubbed “Enjoy great jazz . . . at home and at the home of great jazz.” The campaign allows those who buy $75 or more in jazz product in a single purchase to receive two admissions for selected events at the Blue Note. In its second month, the promotion is “working very well, with numerous customers taking advantage of it,” said Steve Harmon, manager of the Tower’s mid-Manhattan location at 66th Street and Broadway. “This is the kind of marketing all clubs should be doing,” Golden noted, “and it’s encouraging that it works.”

OUT ON OUR TOWN: Jack Sheldon, the trumpeter with the gleaming sound whose boyish vocal timbre makes songs like “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” come to life, is indeed getting around: He’ll light up Alfonse’s in Toluca Lake with his swing-styled tunes and comedic banter both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, then Tuesday and Wednesday, he’ll trot a couple of blocks down the street to that other crowded but convivial Riverside Drive haunt, the Money Tree, where he’s become a mid-week regular. . . . Billy Childs, the pianist who currently spends most of his time ensconced in his Silver Lake apartment finishing up a work for large orchestra, takes a break to play a trio date at the Comeback Inn on Friday. Childs, whose solo debut is “Take for Example This . . . “ (Windham Hill Jazz), will soon be heard in a sideman role on “Pardon Me,” a new LP from Bay Area guitarist Bruce Forman, due out in early January.

CURRENT AND CHOICE ALBUMS: “Stories” (Contemporary), a set of modern originals from trumpeter Tom Harrell (currently with Phil Woods’ quintet), a rare improviser who is both intellectual and moving. Ex-Miles tenorman Bob Berg cuts some steaming John Coltrane-esque solos, too. The set is balanced by such tunes as the 13-minute-long “Viable Blues,” where everyone stretches out, and the Latin-ish “The Water’s Edge”. . . . MJQ-vibesman Milt Jackson’s “A London Bridge” (Pablo), recorded live in London, mixes hot straight-ahead stuff like Coltrane’s “Impressions” and Tadd Dameron’s “Good Bait” with some of those Caribbean-flavored tunes--”Reggae/Later”--that the date’s pianist, Monty Alexander, loves to write and play. . . . And Al Jarreau is back with his usual high-energy blend of jazz and pop on “Heart’s Horizon” (Reprise), spotlighting “Killer Love,” from the Blake Edwards’ film, “Skin Deep,” and solos here and there by saxmen David Sanborn and Brandon Fields. Produced with modern zest by George Duke.