Dazzle Jazz & Baur’s Listening Lounge: A Perfect Combination | Norman Provizer’s Jazz Notes

In just about a month, Dazzle will close its doors on Lincoln Street with a performance by Tyler Gilmore and the Ninth and Lincoln Orchestra. Then, on June 1, it will reopen in the much larger and historic Baur’s Building on Curtis Street, just a block or so from the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. The impressive new space will have multiple stages, a record store, a bakery and coffee shop, and a stepped-up menu from Chief Mario Godoy. The core performance space will be double the size of the current Dazzle location. But, most importantly, it’s early jazz calendar remains impressive. Blues giant Otis Taylor opens the new space on June 1, followed by drummer Brian Blade’s Fellowship Band and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s group. Before long, Dr. Lonnie Smith and guitarist James Blood Ulmer will also be hitting the new stage.

Most recently, Baur’s has been the home of various, though far from nightly sounds, including jazz, from the Music Appreciation Society and that will continue. Dazzle and its owners led by Donald Rossa have done an outstanding job of greatly raising the bar when it comes to jazz in Denver. It found a formula that works during its long stay on Lincoln. Here’s to that continuing after the move downtown to Curtis and it becoming Dazzle at Baur’s.  

Moving to the current week in music, Dazzle, 930 Lincoln, kicks things off on Thursday with the last two nights of the Ravi Coltrane Quartet visit to the club. Ravi, the son of John Coltrane, has managed to carve out his own spot in the music with his own group, as well as hooking up with some of the giants in the music. At Dazzle, his quartet features Glenn Zaleski on piano, Dezron Douglas on bass and Jonathan Blake on drums. Zaleski, you might recall, is part of the cooperative trio (which includes Denver’s Colin Stranahan on drums) that recorded a couple of CDs on the Colorado Capri Records label. On Thursday, Coltrane plays at 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. He and the quartet are also on stage at Dazzle on Friday at 7 and 9 p.m. (303-839-5100).

Also on Thursday, the guitar/organ trio led by Fareed Haque and Tony Monaco is in Boulder at Caffe Sole, 637R S. Broadway, at 7 p.m. (303-499-2985). Last week, the Haque/Monaco trio was in Denver at Nocturne. If you missed the band that knows how to catch a groove there, here’s another chance. And speaking of grooves, drummer Scott Amendola and organ man Wil Blades do just that in a duo context that is at Dazzle on Saturday at 7 and 9 p.m.

On Sunday, Julian Coryell, the guitar-playing son of the great guitarist Larry Coryell (who passed away earlier this year), is at Dazzle with pianist Chuck Lamb (who works with the Brubeck Brothers), saxophonist Joe Anderies, bassist Kim Stone and drummer Mike Marlier. Julian leads the New Eleventh House, a band that borrows its name from the important fusion group of the 1970s led by Larry Coryell. The younger Coryell and company are on stage at 6 and 8 p.m.  Earlier on Sunday, at 2 p.m., the Colorado Jazz Repertory Orchestra brings its big band sound to the Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth in Arvada (720-898-7200). The CJRO has a new disc out titled Invitation (for the tune written by Bronislau Kaper) with covers of standards, Ellington, Gerry Mulligan and Joe Zawinul with an original By Wil Swindler tossed into the mix.

On Friday, Cervantes Other Side, 2630 Welton, has Green Is Beautiful: A Tribute to Blue Note guitarist Grant Green. There’s a host of folks involved led by long-time Grant and golden age of Blue Note enthusiast Eddie Roberts and including Soulive drummer Alan Evans (303-297-1772). The show starts at 9 p.m. And on Saturday, it moves to Ophelia’s Electric Soapbox, 1215 20^th St., also with a 9 p.m. starting time (303-993-8023).     

Continuing past the weekend, singer Mary Louise Lee does her tribute to Ella Fitzgerald on the 100^th anniversary (to the day) of the First Lady of Song’s birth. That’s at Nocturne, 1330 27^th St., at 7 p.m. Then on Wednesday, the musical ends with the MSU Denver Big Band directed by the great clarinetist and composer Don Byron doing its thing at the King Center on the Auraria campus next to downtown at 7:30 p.m. (303-556-2296).

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