A String of Successes in New London Music

Phillip Lutz, New York Times - There is a ferment in the music scene that's " nice to feel."

Jan 15, 2010 1:32 PM - The bassist Brian Torff is known worldwide for his glittering performances with the piano giants George Shearing, Marian McPartland and Errol Garner. So it was something of a surprise to find him, on a rainy night after Christmas, leading a piano-free trio in a basement club here.

But New London’s music scene is full of surprises these days. Despite long-term problems with large projects, it is registering small successes: thriving indie-rock bars, a revitalized regional symphony, a nascent improvisers’ collective, a new performance space and the Jazz Underground, a new club that was packed for Mr. Torff’s show.

“New London has always been on the verge of greatness, but never quite crossed that line,” said Bob Sylvester, 67, a co-owner of the club and a native of New London. “But it does seem a little different this time.”

Since opening in September, the Jazz Underground, tucked away on Golden Street, has been drawing weeknight customers at a fairly steady rate with local and regional talent. The club’s better-known weekend attractions — like Mr. Torff and the singer Giacomo Gates — have easily filled its 50 seats.

For these artists, the Jazz Underground, whose ambience and acoustics suggest an appreciation of club design, offers a place to experiment outside the glare of Manhattan. Mr. Torff made the most of the opportunity — playing front-line melodies like a trumpeter, liberally tapping his bass with a timbale stick and, generally, fashioning a set that went well beyond a straightforward rendering of standards.

Speaking between sets, Mr. Torff, who is the music program director at Fairfield University, said that he liked the artistic freedom the club afforded him. And he enjoyed the chance to give a boost to the fortunes of a rare jazz startup — to which, he said, he was offering his services at a reduced rate.

“We’ve got to pull together,” he said.

Like the Jazz Underground, the Oasis Pub, on nearby Bank Street, also had a full house — albeit a more animated one. In the club, a growing magnet for local and out-of-town bands, perhaps a dozen people sat at the bar or in the single booth, while 60 or so others gyrated to the punk-inspired sounds of Brazen Hussy, one of three groups on the bill.

Just keeping the action under control in the close quarters seemed a full-time job for the major-domo, Sean Murray. But Mr. Murray, 29, has also been prominent behind the scenes, booking the bands and, in recent years, prodding the club’s owners to enlarge the stage and make other improvements to the space.

Mr. Murray, who assembled more than a dozen bands for the I Am Festival in the city’s Waterfront Park in September, has won over cultural figures like David Dorfman, 54, chairman of the dance department at Connecticut College. Mr. Dorfman, who doubles as a saxophonist in the ensemble Above/Below, has played the festival and the pub, which he said he admired for its programming and “appropriately grungy” atmosphere.

“To me,” he said, “the notion that ‘Hey, I want to hear three great bands at the Oasis tonight’ is a lovely night in New London.”

But Mr. Murray has had less success in winning over Steven M. Sigel, the longtime executive director of the Garde Arts Center, on State Street, the small downtown’s most extensive cultural development. Mr. Sigel has been cool to Mr. Murray’s suggestion that he present indie-rock bands.

As he stood in the middle of the Garde’s new performance space — coincidentally named the Oasis Room, it consists of a floor, a stage, lighting and sound equipment but no permanent seating — Mr. Sigel said, “It doesn’t make sense doing something here that you’d just as soon see in a bar.”

He also said that the Oasis Room — which was carved out of an existing banquet area after plans for a more elaborate theater stalled in the financial downturn — had, since opening in 2008, been filling its 125 portable seats with performers like the singer-songwriters Simone and Tom Rush.

The space has been a bright spot for the Garde, a nonprofit group charged with maintaining a cavernous former movie theater in the same building as the Oasis Room. Despite a $14 million renovation, hundreds of the theater’s 1,400-plus seats have routinely gone unsold since the theaters of the Mohegan Sun and Foxwoods casinos opened in the 1990s. The casinos vie with the Garde for talent and ticket buyers, Mr. Sigel said.

The recession has led to program cuts in the big theater and a recent $25,000 payment from the City Council to help it operate, Mr. Sigel said. But, he said, the picture brightened recently when the Mystic Aquarium and National Geographic Live agreed to present a series of five themed shows — the first, a concert by the Soweto Gospel Choir, is set for next month.

Another user of the space, the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra, has been generating excitement with a new conductor, Toshiyuki Shimada, who has expanded the orchestra’s repertory, serving up a piece by a contemporary American, Jennifer Higdon, at his official debut concert in November. The concert also attracted a big-name soloist, the pianist Peter Serkin.

“I want to continue to have this great passion on the stage so it will permeate into the audience,” said Mr. Shimada, who is also the music director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra.

Gabriel Kastelle, a violist with the orchestra, praised the new conductor for his commitment to 20th-century composers — the orchestra’s next concert, on Jan. 23, will feature works by Jacques Ibert and Igor Stravinsky — and suggested that his programming sense would appeal to New Londoners’ restive spirit.

Mr. Kastelle also said he hoped to tap that spirit by drawing on New London’s pool of adventurous instrumentalists for a new collective dedicated to pushing the boundaries of improvised music. The collective has held two sessions in two months, and more are in the works, he said.

“There is definitely a ferment that is nice to feel,” he said.