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Finding L.A. Jazz at a Cool Price

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Looking for an inexpensive and often adventurous night of music? These Los Angeles and Orange County venues fill the bill.

It's a quiet Sunday evening and the sun is falling gently over Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock. A few stragglers are typing on laptops at a corner cafe, and a steady stream of customers is visiting a nearby video store. Inside the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts, however, saxophonist Jason Robinson is calling down the heavens.

Offering up throaty, impassioned improvisations that recall Roscoe Mitchell and John Coltrane, San Diego resident Robinson is working a small but devoted crowd hunched forward in metal folding chairs. With its stately white archways and heavy chandeliers, the Center for the Arts is a popular wedding spot for locals, but tonight it's home to the Open Gate Theatre’s Sunday evening concert series, which is dedicated to the outer limits of jazz and improvisation.

The series is nearing its 10th year at the center, but the show's booker and host, Alex Cline, sounds apologetic in introducing the performers. “August is our slowest month; everyone's vacationing or something for some reason," Cline said with a wry grin. “But what better way to spend your time than with this lovely, uncompromising music?"

Even with the temporary departure of the Jazz Bakery from the local scene -- the club closed earlier this year and is continuing to search for a new home -- L.A. still has a handful of traditional jazz clubs, such as Catalina Bar & Grill, Vibrato and Charlie O’s. But once cover charges and dinner are factored together, lower-cost alternatives that cater to jazz's younger or more unpredictable side, with players whose musical direction might be more roundabout than “straight ahead," can be elusive.

Downtown's Caf Metropol and local jazz label Cryptogramophone's monthly First Friday series at the Museum of Neon Art are established destinations for inexpensive and often adventurous music nights. Earlier this year, Studio City's Vitello's also started offering jazz, and its elegant upstairs space has earned a good reputation among musicians and fans.

“There's no ice-blending machines, there's no cash register, there's no phone," said drummer Peter Erskine, who's played Vitello's a number of times. “It sounded more like Donte's did than any other room I've been in since."

Visions of the late North Hollywood club aside, Vitello's and its Red Carpet Jazz Series reach out to fixtures on the local scene such as Erskine, Darek Oles and Bob Sheppard. But the space also has opened its doors to less familiar faces.

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