East Coast Jazz Royalty Makes a Rare West Coast Visit to Casa Romantica

I am happy with the southern California jazz offerings. There is enough here to keep jazz aficionados busy, but as any arts fanatic will tell you, NYC is the place where the giants and legends take residence. That’s why Casa Romantica’s upcoming Casa Jazz Club is the west coast jazz event of the year. It combines a rare visit from NYC jazz royalty with the rare ambiance of Casa Romantica.

The Music

Both Ravi Coltrane and Nasheet Waits are sons of jazz legends, protégés of jazz legends and are busy sidemen of jazz legends (their resumes are too long to list here). You can’t buy this kind of education. You must be born into it. Furthermore, Coltrane and Waits’ sidemen for these dates are accomplished bandleaders, composers and producers themselves, with several recordings bearing their names. In fact, Bennie Maupin is a living legend. I recall seeing his name in the record stores 40 years ago (his name stood out because it looked like Bernie Taupin).

The jazz style they play is best described as post-bop. Admittedly, post-bop is a very broad category, but what you should know is this: It is not smooth jazz, but it is not chaotic or free jazz either.  It’s the kind of music Miles Davis et. al. started playing in the mid-1960’s. It can energize you; it can put you in a transcendent state (it did for John Coltrane); it can make your jaw drop from the sheer artistry. Mine does!

These performers rarely venture west of the Mississippi River and when they do it is to San Francisco or LA. Orange County venues are outliers for these guys.

The Ambiance

The typical experience at a marquee jazz club is an in-and-out transaction. It’s a hustle into a dark, cavernous, curtained room, a food/drink minimum, a cover charge and a hustle-out for the next seating. The Casa Jazz Club is quite the opposite. It starts with a complimentary cocktail reception on Casa Romantica’s Ocean Terrace (food by Carbonara Catering), where you can mingle with fellow patrons and take in the lovely vistas.

The concert follows in the Main Salon, an intimate, yet open room that is used as one of the institution’s main performance spaces. The icing on this cake: The artist will meet and greet with the audience at the conclusion of their sets.

The Total Experience

Indeed, this will be a multi-sensory pleasure: aural, visual, epicurean and social. I’ve often complained that the car-centric southern California life, the Internet age and working from home diminished our opportunities for fellowship and shared experiences. Rich events such as these held on an intimate scale are the antidote to that trend.

I am jazzed about this jazz!