Contemporary Jazz Has a West Coast Stamp

From the outside, they look unimpressive--typical restaurants in busy pedestrian areas. One is located in the middle of Westwood’s most active street. The other anchors the west end of Sherman Oaks’ revitalized Ventura Boulevard area.

There is nothing--no bells and whistles, no neon signs and Day-Glo paint--to suggest that the former, Bon Appetit, and the latter, Le Cafe, are among the Los Angeles area’s most active hotbeds for the many variations that make up the style known as contemporary jazz.

“If a stranger to the West Coast were to look at our performance room--it’s small, upstairs, in the back of the restaurant--and be told it’s one of L.A.’s top jazz clubs, he’d probably laugh,” said Dale Jaffe, manager of Le Cafe,

Yet, on any given night, the intimate, 700-square-foot Room Upstairs at Le Cafe reverberates with the sounds of an energetic and highly eclectic brand of jazz that bears a uniquely West Coast stamp. The performers trace their roots to mainstream jazz, work in the recording studios and have strong commercial ambitions.

Most grew up hearing pop music, as well as jazz, and refuse to be limited by traditional definitions.

Call their music fusion, call it contemporary, call it funk or pop or electric jazz. None of the labels is precisely inclusive, but the music played by such young Southland musicians as saxophonists Brandon Fields, Michael Paulo and Sam Riney, bassists Brian Bromberg, John Patitucci and John Leftwich, keyboardists Gregg Karukas and Mitch Forman, guitarists Mike Miller and Pat Kelley and drummers Tom Brechtlein and Alphonse Mouzon touches all those bases.

They play music that is becoming identified as the West Coast jazz of the ‘90s: bright, contemporary rhythms, brisk melodies and highly facile improvisations.

And they are performing, for the most part, in places like Le Cafe, Bon Appetit, North Hollywood’s Baked Potato and occasionally at Santa Monica’s At My Place, Redondo Beach’s the Strand and San Juan Capistrano’s Coach House.

“I love the word jazz ,” Fields said last week, “but to me the word means improvisation, and not necessarily in a straight-ahead groove. I don’t mind funk and back-beat style rhythm sections and I like openness in my music, just so long as the playing is adventurous.”

Bromberg agreed: “So much is happening here in the L.A. area, in so many different ways. There really are a lot of people around who want to speak with their own voices--it’s like a nucleus of musicians who seem to be creating almost a standard for contemporary jazz around the world.”

When performers such as Bromberg and Fields come on stage at Bon Appetit or Le Cafe, the audiences tend to be young, filled with aspiring musicians and attentive to the most subtle musical details.

“We get a lot of students and musicians,” Jaffe said, “and they want to see the leaders on the instruments they play. They come to our place because they know it’s a pure listening room and we’ve got good players here seven days of the week.”

Bon Appetit opened with a cabaret policy in the early ‘80s. But under co-owner David Gimpel’s guidance, it has moved strongly in the direction of contemporary jazz.

All is not sweetness and light on the West Coast contemporary jazz scene, however. Both Gimpel and Jaffe spontaneously expressed misgivings over the negative effects FM radio station KKGO’s changeover from jazz to classical music will have upon their efforts to schedule the best contemporary music.

“It’s very disturbing,” said Gimpel. “It’s going to make it extremely difficult to bring new jazz acts in the Los Angeles area. Most of the young contemporary musicians are very dependent upon the visibility they get from radio airplay. We’re already seeing a drop-off in the audiences for some performers, and I think the lack of airplay is the difference.”

The concern that both the club owners and some musicians expressed regarding the commercial problems facing the music underlined another, somewhat darker aspect of the contemporary West Coast jazz scene.

Historically, most jazz players have put the music first and the finances second, often at the risk of their livelihoods. Today’s contemporary players--super-sidemen with outrageously successful rock bands, recording-studio regulars, eager to lead their own bands--often come to the music with a more calculated point of view. Most have seen, firsthand, the potential riches that commercially-successful music can bring. For some, the possibility of such stardom has become more tempting than the financially riskier choice of creating original music.

“It can be a problem,” said Bromberg. “All the hype, the record deals, the glamour and the studio scene--some people let it go to their heads and they get an attitude. People get defensive, and territorial. They don’t want to lose what they’ve got or what they’ve worked for, because the cost of living is so high and living is tough.”

Inevitably, some players will drift (or dive) into commercial waters, hoping to be swept toward islands of financial achievement. But, just as inevitably, younger players will continue to arrive on the scene, attracted by the extraordinary vigor and energy that characterizes the best of today’s West Coast scene.

“If you turn on the television tonight,” said Le Cafe’s Jaffe, “what type of music are they using behind almost everything? Typically, it’s not heavy metal or bop--it’s contemporary music played by the same players who are working at Le Cafe and Bon Appetit.”

“Look at it this way,” Jaffe said, taking a determinedly upbeat position. “We’ve got a few problems, and the music’s got a few problems. But we’re going to stick with what we’re doing because when it gets down to the bottom line, we believe that this new brand of West Coast contemporary jazz is alive and well.”