Ringside With a Steinway

Eleven months ago, pianist John Wood got tired. “I’d been working the clubs for years, playing on bad pianos in noisy rooms, and suddenly I just got tired,” the jazz musician says.

That was the beginning of the Studio Masters Concert Series, a unique phenomenon that defies categorization. Wood took over an extra room in the Studio Masters recording studio, a family business founded by his father, Randy Wood, and started taking reservations. Sometimes he plays with a trio, sometimes a bass, and sometimes it’s just him. He’ll play any night of the week, and unless you bring a date, there’s a chance it’ll be just the two of you.

“I’ve played for just one person, or as many as 15. It’s a small room. I play for a lot of couples. Sometimes people bring a bottle of wine.”

There is no fixed schedule, and Wood is generally available to perform seven days a week. “You just have to call,” he says. About half the sessions are recorded, and if you’d like, Wood will sell you a tape of the performance.

The evening begins with a brief tour of the studio and a little family history. Wood’s father was the proprietor of Randy’s Records in Tennessee and of radio station WLIC, “one of the first white stations to play black music,” Wood says.

The lobby is lined with the gold records his father’s Dot label garnered in the ‘50s and ‘60s. “They made these records in three-hour recording sessions,” Wood says, then leads the way to a small room where the more recent gold records by the likes of Paula Abdul are grudgingly given wall space.

“These songs, on the other hand, never really happened. They’re all staged. Multitrack recording was the death of the music I love. I like to think of this room as pro wrestling, while out there, that’s boxing.”

Wood’s performance is as much about boxing as it is about jazz. “When I saw Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, it gave me everything I got from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. For the past 25 years boxing has been the center of my existence. It’s the reason I was able to continue playing music,” he explains. “My inspiration comes from fighters, not musicians. Boxing is a lot like playing jazz, actually. It’s a two-handed activity, it’s improvisational, and it’s the ultimate form of individualism. Boxing is a microcosm of life’s struggle.”

The concert space is a small room, furnished with a futon couch, coffee table, some chairs and Wood’s 1929 Steinway. Album covers of jazz greats such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane are tacked on the walls, and pictures of Wood’s two children occupy a shelf beside the piano.

The audience on a recent Tuesday night is made up of Ralph Semien and Paul Tanger. Semien has been here before and brought Tanger along on his return visit. “I used to go to hear John play in clubs, but then he disappeared. Then I heard him on the radio talking about this, and I came down.”

The program begins with “Merat,” the first song Wood composed, at the age of 15, when he was pining for an Ethiopian exchange student at his high school.

Between numbers, Wood pauses to shadow box a few punches and reminisce about the three years he spent as world champ Bobby Ciccone’s sparring partner. Then he holds up his hands and shows you his badly damaged fingers. “I can only close three of them,” Wood says. “It’s not really a problem in playing the piano, but I have a hard time with car doors and faucets.”

The last song Wood plays is his most recent composition, a tune called “Upsidasium” that is joyful and sweet, yet sophisticated, a fair assessment of Wood himself. This is probably the only place in Los Angeles where you can pay $10 to have someone want to tell you the meaning of life without resorting to palmistry.

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Where: Studio Masters Recording Studio, 8312 Beverly Blvd.

When: Nightly. Call for reservations, (310) 391-7986.

Cost: $10. Copy of session recording $20.