That sign is all there is on the scene to steer you to the best-kept jazz secret in New York. Jazz lives at the center’s concert hall, the John Birks Gillespie Memorial Auditorium. The concerts there hardly ever get as large an audience as they deserve, so a small coterie of initiates have had some of the most personally electrifying musical experiences imaginable week after week for over seven years now in a program called Jazz Tuesdays.
These events are produced by Mike Longo, whose contributions to jazz as a piano player, composer, arranger, educator, and concert and record producer are almost inconceivably extensive and varied. He is the leader of a big band and various smaller groups, writing or arranging almost all the tunes for them, and he is the heart of the music with his piano or electric piano and his warmth, humor, and geniality. The last three months have been typical, with consistently excellent, exciting performances by his big band, his funk band, and his trio, and new compositions and arrangements on every date.
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