Alumni Mark Catalina Milestone

The warm congeniality that filled Catalina Bar & Grill on Monday night was a convincing expression of the venue’s central role in the Southland jazz world.

To celebrate the Hollywood club’s 15th anniversary, owner Catalina Popescu (universally addressed as “Catalina”) decorated the room with colorful balloons and offered a no-cover-charge evening featuring cameos by many of the performers who have stepped onto the stage in the last decade and a half.

Backing the line of artists who took the stage--including, among many others, Kenny Burrell, Sherman Ferguson, Barbara Morrison, Ann Patterson and Julie Kelly--was the trio of Donald Vega (with bassist Jeff Littleton and drummer Felix Wise).

Vega’s appearance was particularly appropriate, since the young pianist has virtually grown up at Catalina’s. Initially surfacing as a gifted teenager, he continued to perform during a difficult period in 1997 in which he had to fight, successfully, to avoid an Immigration and Naturalization Service mandate that could have triggered deportation to his native Nicaragua.

Now playing with growing skill and confidence--fully revealed in his assured renderings of pieces ranging from Thelonious Monk’s “Evidence” to Chick Corea’s “Tones for Joan’s Bones”--Vega by his presence underscored the importance of Catalina’s to the jazz community.

It didn’t start out that way, however. And some of the most engaging moments of the evening were offered by veteran jazz artist Buddy Collette, describing the club in its very beginnings, when he supplied the guidance to transform what had been an Italian restaurant into a viable jazz performance space.

Catalina, taking the microphone, added her recollections of the thrill of seeing Dizzy Gillespie performing on her own stage. For a Romanian immigrant, trying something new in a new country, it was, she said, “the most thrilling night of my life.”

The flow of performances that filled the evening--starting with an invitation-only opening set that drew many of the major figures in Southland jazz, and continuing with subsequent sets for lines of fans who waited patiently outside for space in the club to open up--produced plenty of other thrills, from Burrell’s sensuous rendering of “Autumn Leaves” to Morrison’s take-no-prisoners romp through “I Love Being Here With You” (a particularly appropriate choice for the evening).

But all that was nothing new for Catalina regulars, fully aware that, on any given night, performances often provide musical moments to remember, presented in a warm and welcoming room that is also a world-class jazz destination.