Vortex Brings British Jazz Renaissance to East End:
Mike Zwerin
April 3 (Bloomberg) -- The Vortex Jazz Club, which is central to what some people are calling a renaissance of British jazz, is celebrating a successful first year in its shiny new location overlooking a parking lot in Dalston, in the northeastern London borough of Hackney.
There is no tube service to Dalston and the birthday is not exactly a national holiday, though there will be performances by, among others, jazz doyens John Dankworth and Cleo Laine.
The Vortex is well-programmed; it has excellent sound; it is smoke-free; there is no minimum charge and you can order in a pizza from next door. The renaissance involves a new generation, including the talented pianists Zoe Rahman and Andrew McCormack, bassist Orlando le Fleming and drummers Chris Higginbottom and Gene Calderazzo.
There are also some well-honed bands with names like Acoustic Ladyland, Polar Bear, Partisans, Squash Recipe and Orchestra Mahatma that sound as though they really mean business.
Many of them record for Babel Label, run by Oliver Weindling, who is also the director of the Vortex. He compares the rebirth to other fertile U.K. jazz greats and eras -- John McLaughlin, John Surman and Soft Machine in the late 1960s and early 1970s; Loose Tubes, Courtney Pine and Andy Sheppard in the 1980s.
`Sax Appeal'
In a recent feature article called ``How Jazz Is Giving the Kids Sax Appeal'' in the London Evening Standard, Fiona Maddocks wrote that the Vortex ``illustrates a trend.'' Applications for jazz courses in U.K. music colleges have doubled in the past four years. Charlie Beale, once a Cambridge organ scholar, teaches jazz piano at the Royal College of Music. Maddocks quotes Simon Purcell, who heads Trinity College of Music's ``fast growing jazz department,'' as saying: ``You can now learn jazz from zero to doctoral level'' in the U.K.
The first Vortex, which opened in Stoke Newington in 1987, was an essential small venue where musicians wanted to play and hang out, something like the 55 or Smalls in New York. But then people who could no longer afford to live in nearby Islington began to move to Stoke Newington, which became unaffordable in turn. The club was forced to vacate its original premises because of what Weindling calls ``an unsympathetic landlord and a ridiculous rent increase.''
A Building to Spare?
A Save the Vortex appeal was launched. Fundraisers were organized. Weindling, 50, was drafted to help because he had a record label and he knew about the music business. Between sets, he would joke around at the microphone by saying: ``If somebody has a building to spare, let us know.''
One night, Adam Hart, who ran Hackney Cooperative Developments, a non-profit, community-benefit company, was in the club to hear his brother Charlie play the violin. Adam was in the final stages of planning the Dalston Culture House that would be the cornerstone of a new town square in a rundown area that he wanted to regenerate.
``I have a building,'' he said to Weindling after the gig. ``Are you interested?''
``You've got to be joking,'' Weindling replied. It was only a mile from the old place: ``It was a match made in social and cultural heaven.''
Designer Park
Weindling has nothing but good news these days. ``This summer, the parking lot in Dalston will be converted into a park with grass, trees, benches and fountains designed by the award-winning landscape architects Whitelaw Turkington,'' he said. ``We plan to open a record store and to start recording concerts for downloading from our Web site. With a cafe on the ground floor, the Vortex will play a key role in the renewal of the area. There may even be an extension of the underground by 2009.
``The Vortex is set up as a charity,'' Weindling said. ``Everybody's a volunteer; I'm a volunteer. We have no subsidies. But we have this brand new, bright blue building and good music, and the average age of our audience is about 40. At least around here, young people are listening to jazz again. There are always a lot of young people in the club. Our manager is 25 -- Oxford chap. He brings in all of his mates.''
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