Some Low and High Notes for San Diego Fans : Music: One promoter has gone incognito after closing his club and the jazz society is losing its leader. But, a new club is opening in San Marcos.

September is shaping up as a month of contrasting emotions for jazz fans. Consider the latest news:

* San Diego promoter Steve Satkowski has gone incognito after closing his jazz club in Pacific Beach, with creditors anxious to track him down.

* The San Diego Jazz Society is in limbo with the resignation of its president.

* And a new jazz club opens tonight in San Marcos.

After 14 months of operation, Satkowski closed the Jazz Note after pianist Joanne Brackeen’s July 26 show. He said then that he planned to reopen elsewhere this month, but he has been unavailable for comment since.

“He has pretty much disappeared,” said Diana Fucci, assistant credit manager at the San Diego Reader, which has been trying to track down Satkowski over unpaid advertising bills. Fucci wouldn’t say how much Satkowski owes. He took out weekly ads in the Reader that cost as much as $746.

“Right now, it’s gone to our credit manager and she’s deciding what we should do,” Fucci said. “As far as action, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Satkowski also owes about $500 to KSDS-FM (88.3), the San Diego City College jazz station. That amount represents underwriting support he promised in exchange for on-air promotions for his club. His KSDS account is 60 days in arrears.

“We can’t find him,” reported Joe Kocherhans, the station’s weekend supervisor.

And Satkowski owes “hundreds” to Ted Martin, a North County jazz buff who managed the Jazz Note’s promotional mailings. Martin last spoke with Satkowski at the Brackeen show.

But Diego’s, the Pacific Beach restaurant from which Satkowski rented his club’s loft-like space, is not among inquiring creditors.

“I’m not looking for him,” said Michael Mack, a court-appointed trustee who is managing Diego’s through a bankruptcy reorganization process. “He was supposed to provide us an audit of his income, and we were supposed to share it. Last time I talked to him--about a week after he closed--he said he would do that, but I haven’t seen or heard from him.

“I don’t know if he owes us anything. He may not. He had some rough months. We made zippo off the club. It was his assertion that he was never successful enough so that he was above the minimum criteria by which he would pay us.

“He would argue that the PR he got for the club benefited Diego’s, that a number of people who came to the club had dinner at Diego’s. I think that’s a stretch.”

Meanwhile, one source said Satkowski is staying with a friend in Rancho Bernardo. A call to that number yields a recorded message with a voice that sounds unmistakably like Satkowski’s, giving a spiel for a glass-tinting company.

As for the San Diego Jazz Society, John Lawrence, who founded the organization in 1983, is stepping down Sept. 15 as president. He wants to devote more time to his businesses: a carpet- and window-cleaning service, and a computer-software venture.

The Jazz Society received $13,600 from the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture last year. The money went toward presenting several free public concerts, and three paid shows, including performances featuring baritone saxophonist Nick Brignola and another featuring tenor saxophonist Buck Hill.

Support for straight-ahead jazz in San Diego has a spotty history, but the turnout--about 17 people--for Hill’s show at the Bristol Court Hotel downtown was especially disappointing, Lawrence said.

Grants from the commission for arts and culture represented the bulk of the jazz society’s budget. Because no application was made for this year, the society is without funding. Applications for funding for next year are due in November, but Lawrence was unsure whether a new president would be elected by the society, or whether a funding package might be submitted.

The likely candidate for the job is Carlsbad jazz fanatic Jim Merod, the society’s vice president, according to Ted Martin, the society’s secretary and treasurer. Merod could not be reached for comment.

“Things are kind of up in the air,” said Martin, another North County jazz lover. He said no meetings are scheduled to discuss the society’s future.

The demise of the society would be yet another blow to San Diego’s struggling jazz scene.

Started by Lawrence in 1983 as the North County Jazz Society, later changing its name to San Diego Jazz Society, it presented more than 100 jazz shows.

A highlight was the society’s first presentation at the Lyceum Theatre downtown in 1990. Saxophonist Marshall Royal and trumpeter Joe Wilder, seasoned first-rate players, turned in a memorable performance before an impressive crowd of more than 350.

Finally, some good news. Bob Embesi, who closed his Jazz by the Way club in Rancho Bernardo in June, reopens tonight in a former pizza parlor in San Marcos, in the Von’s shopping center at Rancho Santa Fe Road and San Marcos Boulevard.

Embesi promises to continue with the kind of top local jazz he presented in Rancho Bernardo. Murray Davison and the North County All Stars open the club tonight and will also be featured Friday. Guitarist Pat Dana is the main attraction Saturday night.

Along with dishing up jazz, the club serves Italian food. There is no cover charge and no minimum.

After stamping out start-up bugs this week, Embesi plans to offer jazz Tuesday through Saturday nights beginning next week.

CRITIC’S CHOICE MARCHABLE BRAND OF JAZZ

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band brings its rollicking, marchable brand of New Orleans-based jazz to the San Diego Street Scene this weekend.

The group is scheduled to perform Friday night from 8-8:30 and Saturday from 7:15-7:45 on Stage 7, the Louisiana Heritage Stage.

During the past year, the group underwent significant changes. Last fall, Revert Andrews (trombone) and Pete Anderson (sousaphone) replaced longtime members Charles (trombone) and Kirk (sousaphone) Joseph, who disagreed with Dozen leader Gregory Davis over the group’s future.

“Musically, we were going the same direction, but we just differed in our opinions of what we needed to do on stage,” Davis said. “As I see it, when people come out to see you, they want to be entertained. To me, that’s more important than just standing up there and playing a song. I look at my job as making sure people who come out to see us are sweating by the end of our set, that they become involved, singing or dancing.”

The Dozen’s newest recording, “Open Up,” released last year before Andrews and Anderson joined, marks the band’s new dedication to its own musicianship and original material.

Past Dirty Dozen albums have featured prominent guests, including rock ‘n’ roller Elvis Costello.

“The main thing we wanted to do was record our own material,” Davis said. “We had sort of gotten away from that, having guest artists, arranging other folks’ songs.”

The dominant piece of original music on “Open Up” is “The Lost Souls of Southern Louisiana.” The title makes it sound like a tribute to the band’s native state, but the dark, moody song is intended to have broader implications.

“I wrote it from my experiences around the world,” Davis said. “I wanted to put into music how I was feeling about the global situation as it relates to people with no money, no homes, no jobs, no hope.

“We play a lot of nice venues--theaters, clubs. In all of our travels we see the same thing: All of these people living on the street. Lots of politicians, people ‘in the know,’ come out to the shows. We would always notice, on the way out, they would have to step over the people in the street, but they would always step over them like they weren’t even there.

“But when it comes election time, here comes a man on a white horse (a presidential candidate) saying, ‘I’m gonna do this for you, it’s gonna be better.’ In reality, they aren’t doing anything.”

The Dirty Dozen is scheduled to be on the “Tonight Show” on Thursday.

Davis promised that their sets at Street Scene will be loaded with music from “Open Up,” as well as selections from four previous releases.

Tickets for each day of music at the outdoor festival in the Gaslamp Quarter downtown are $17. Special two-day passes can be purchased in advance for $30. Ticketmaster is handling tickets (278-TIXS).