I dropped by the Glamour Bar last night with a few friends to check out this jazz pianist doing a solo thing.?? Though I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen his black and white dreadlocks before, he looked familiar but I couldn’t place him.?? In any case he was rocking out on the keys, putting out some really nice stuff; doing interesting solo piano is a very difficult thing but this guy was busting out a lot of creative rhythmic and comping ideas while playing over the top of them at the same time.?? I dug it, but unfortunately most of the glamorous clientele were more involved in their glamorous conversations than were into listening to the pianist in the corner.?? So the background noise was pretty overwhelming most of the time.?? As nice as the space is, it’s really not set up to be an effective venue for live music.?? I don’t know that the old one upstairs was any better but at least it had a sort of raised stage area.
[...] Kiwi Pianist Aron Ottignon, who I heard a while back at the Glamour Bar, will be featured in two separate concerts this month at JZ club; one solo piano concert on the 16th and also a small-group setting of his own music on the 18th. The group featured on the 18th is his own band “Aronas,” which is your typical sort of Punk-Jazz group. Not. I think the rest of the group will consist of members picked up locally. I sure hope people are more attentive this time for his solo thing, as it was quite good but I couldn’t hear it last time because everyone was talking loudly. [...]