Final Curtain Drops Tonight at Alfonse’s; Wave of New Clubs Rolls Into Santa Monica

“There are a lot of sad people here,” Charlie Chiarenza said during a break in the action Monday at Alfonse’s in North Hollywood, which is being sold and closes tonight. Under Chiarenza’s ownership, the room had become the chief mainstream jazz haunt in the San Fernando Valley.

Economics forced the sale, said Chiarenza, who owned the club with two other partners. “I was set to either sell or remodel and an offer came along and my partners decided they wanted to get their money out,” he said.

Chiarenza intimated that he would have another jazz club at some point in the future. “The sale gives me a chance to put my eggs in another basket,” he said. “I’m not out of the business, just for a few months or so.”

The establishment has been sold to attorney Kathy Hansen, who was unavailable for comment. Chiarenza would not disclose the selling price of Alfonse’s. He indicated that if the room, which will reopen in March under a new name, has a music policy, it “will be singers and piano trios, rather than jazz groups, like the Shorty Rogerses or the Dave Pells,” Chiarenza said, referring to some of the major names who regularly played his room.

Chiarenza said that though Alfonse’s wasn’t making a ton of money, it was making some. “Hey, we were doing OK here. It could have been better, but it was good. Like tonight, the place is jammed.”

Tonight’s closing party, which features Larry Gales, the former Thelonious Monk bassist who was featured in the recent film “Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser,” “will be a real hullabaloo,” promised Chiarenza.

To somewhat counteract the departure of Alfonse’s, three new venues have popped up in Santa Monica and all within walking distance of one other.

The Red Sea (1551 Ocean Ave., (213) 394-5198), known for its Ethiopian cuisine, recently added jazz with trombonist George Bohanon’s quartet and features pianist Billy Childs’ quartet, Friday and Saturday. The music policy is under the direction of Daphne Bolden, who operated the Keystone Korner nightclub in San Francisco from 1977-81. “I love jazz and it deserves to be heard,” says Bolden. “We need another good club on the Westside.” Performances at the Red Sea, where cover varies, are at 8 and 10 p.m.

Down the street at Lobby Bar of the new Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel (1700 Ocean Ave., (213) 458-6700), the piano-bass team of the May Brothers works Monday-Thursday, 6-10 p.m., and Friday-Saturday, 7-11 p.m. There’s no cover for the music, which spotlights nimble-fingered guitarist Ron Eschete, Monday-Thursday, and fellow no-slouch plectrist Mark Waggoner, Friday-Saturday.

Completing the new-club trio will be the Bottom of the Boat (located beneath the Boathouse Restaurant at 301 Santa Monica Pier, (213) 393-6475), which opens Feb. 9 with trumpeter Ralf Rickert’s group. The room, where cover will be $8 and music at 9 p.m., also plans to feature an improvisational comedy group.

As part of a very short tour that includes stops in Las Vegas and Santa Cruz, composer-pianist-bandleader Toshiko Akiyoshi brings her Jazz Orchestra, featuring her husband/reedman Lew Tabackin, to Pasadena’s Ambassador Auditorium Thursday.

These days, Akiyoshi--who moved back to Manhattan from Los Angeles in 1982 after a 10-year stay in the Southland--is working less with her orchestra and more as a pianist, the manner in which she entered the jazz business in the mid-’50s. “Even though we had tours of Japan in July and Europe at the end of October with the (big) band, it was the small group work that made it a good year,” she says.

“The (big) band costs too much money and not many club owners want to take the chance on booking one,” she went on. “And schools don’t have the arts budgets they used to, so it’s very hard. But, hey, even Count Basie had to use a small group at one time.” In the early ‘50s, economics forced Basie to scale down his usual big band to an octet.

Akiyoshi spends a lot of time at the piano. “Mainly, I’m practicing,” she says, ironically. “It’s amazing that you have to keep practicing, every day. There’s no end to it,” she adds.

Asked how she feels now about her move back to Gotham, Akiyoshi philosophizes: “No move is a good move when you have a band for 10 years and you have to leave it. But that’s the way the ball bounces.”