Baltimore jazz renaissance

On the second floor of a beautifully sculpted white marble building in the heart of Baltimore’s arty Mount Vernon district, a movement is gathering energy.

This is An die Musik Live, tucked away above its record shop in the former home of the Eubie Blake Center on Charles Street, Baltimore’s major cultural thoroughfare. It’s the city’s most unusual performance space — and it’s at the center of a jazz renaissance in a town that has seen more than its fair share of ups and downs in the music business.

Baltimore is steeped in jazz tradition. The music’s roots can be traced to the innovative ragtime piano playing of a teenage Eubie Blake, who honed his craft in turn-of-the-20th-century Baltimore bars and bordellos. Singer Billie Holiday was raised in the city and began her career in places such as the Royal Theater on Pennsylvania Avenue during the 1930s.

That was a high point during a golden jazz age for Baltimore. It peaked in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, then fell into decline. One by one, clubs, including the Famous Ballroom, the Jazz Closet and the Bandstand — where legends Dexter Gordon, Tommy Flanagan and Milt Jackson once played — closed their doors.

Now a spirited new venue, a couple of old mainstays and an influx of young musicians are resurrecting jazz in the city.

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The miniature concert hall at An die Musik Live exemplifies the resurgence: Fueled by weekly concerts by the Peabody Conservatory’s Jazz Orchestra — a big band led by bassist Michael Formanek that favors the compositions of jazz masters such as Charles Mingus and Thad Jones — and regularly scheduled performances by world-class musicians, it throbs with energy from week to week.

Last Friday, legendary tenor saxophonist David Murray, accompanied by Baltimore’s own Lafayette Gilchrist on piano, played an exclusive pair of shows. The next evening, Chicago pianist Andrew Hill played two concerts as part of an invitation-only series arranged by An die Musik’s director of jazz and improvisational music, Bernard Lyons.

“We’ve been building up our concert series slowly with about two major performances each month, around which we also try to give an opportunity to give local and regional artists a place to play,” Mr. Lyons says.

The weekend shows were sandwiched between performances by the local Trio Ricochet, a group of twentysomething improvisational virtuosos, and the start of the Peabody Jazz Orchestra season, which coincides with the new semester at the Peabody Conservatory, the Juilliard of Baltimore.

The young musicians in both groups can make a listener feel that the world is still full of wonder. And don’t let the “student” tag fool you: Though they’re young, the students in the Peabody Jazz Orchestra have spent their lives in music.

Other performances scheduled for An die Musik Live include the Ethnic Heritage ensemble with a pair of shows Feb. 4 and Baltimore vocalist Alicia Carter, in two shows Feb. 11.

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Jazz in Baltimore may not have returned to the lofty heights it enjoyed decades ago, but it survives and is nurtured by musicians, fans and such devoted club owners as Keith Covington of the New Haven Lounge — “The Haven,” as it is more popularly known.

“It has been hard to make jazz work in Baltimore. It’s fragile: The market isn’t as great as it used to be. But those of us who do it, do it for love, not money. We’re rich in spirit,” Mr. Covington says.

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