Harlem Jazz's Best Kept Secret: the River Room

It's official! The River Room of Harlem located at The Riverbank State Park/145th and Riverside Drive has been discovered by The New York Times who describe the River Room as “pure magic."

The view is magnificent, the food excellent and we present the very best Jazz every Friday and Saturday from 9pm through to 11.30pm. The music charge is a very reasonable $5 per head.

For more information on the River Room please go to the website below.

Here's our run down for January:

January 5 & 6 -- David Bixler Quintet
David Bixler, Alto Saxophone; Scott Wendholt, Trumpet; John Hart, Guitar; Andy Watson, Drums; Ugonna Okegwo, Bass

David has performed and toured with the orchestras of Toshiko Akiyoshi and Duke Ellington at prestigious venues including the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, Symphony Center in Chicago, the Snow Mass Jazz Festival in Aspen, CO, and New York's JVC Jazz Festival.

Since 2000 David has been a member of the Grammy-nominated Chico O'Farrill Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, two years ago taking over the lead-alto chair. The band has toured through out Europe, North America and Central America in addition to performing at Birdland in New York City each Sunday. Additionally, during the fall of 2005, David performed with Jazz at Lincoln Center's Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra at the historic Concert Hall in Shanghai, China.

January 12 & 13 -- The Sam Barsh Band
Sam Barsh - keys/melodica, Tim Collins - vibes, Ari Folman-Cohen - bass, Jaimeo Brown - drums

SAM BARSH is a keyboardist, composer and producer/songwriter. His band, the SAM BARSH GROUP focuses on the raw, funky and tripped out side of things, mixing jazz, r&b electro-ambience and intense energy.

For the past 3 years Barsh toured and recorded with the Avishai Cohen Trio. He has performed with a diverse group of artists, including: Cassandra Wilson, Bobby McFerrin, Dave Samuels (of Spyro Gyra), Lonnie Plaxico, Debbie Friedman, Maurice Brown, Christophe Schweizer, Ben Monder, Branford Marsalis, Kenny Wollessen, Ravi Coltrane and Robin Eubanks.

January 19 -- Mary Beth Hassell

Mary Beth flying in from Manchester England, was a finalist in 2001 Jazz Perrier Awards, performing at 606 Club in London and more locally she has appeared 4 out of the last 5 years at the Manchester Jazz Festival in addition to the Wigan, Southport and North Wales Festivals. She has sung alongside Branford Marsalis and Lianne Carroll.

January 20 -- PVD

Where has all the damn soul gone? In an era when artists fret about the size of their sample library, PVD relishes its task: to make you shake your ass (move your body) without the aid of a quantize button, without a pair of decks, & without pretension. PVD is, plain & simple, an old school hip-hop band. They just happen to be playing jazz. The groove begins and ends with Pat Van Dyke, the namesake, composer, & drummer for the band whose style is the aggregate of many influences: Bonham, ?uestlove, & Tony Williams coming at you all at once. Also responsible for the contagious head-nod spreading throughout the audience is bassist Kellen Harrison; who sits far enough behind the beat to make you look over your shoulder every so often just to make sure he's still there. On the keys, Jameel Roberts preaches the gospel of the Fender Rhodes, while Ben Zeff urges melodies from his guitar on jam after jam.

January 26 & 27 -- David Weiss Quintet
David Weiss - Trumpet, J.D. Allen - Tenor Sax, Nir Felder - Guitar Luques Curtis - Bass, Kendrick Scott - Drums

The Quintet is reexamining some of the most innovative music of the period, some of it neglected, some, perhaps, never quite as developed as it could have been as things seemed to move at a pace during that period that left some music from being fully realized as they quickly moved on to the next new thing. Among the composers being reexamined and re-imagined are Andrew Hill, Wayne Shorter, Joe Henderson and music from the unsung Kenny Cox and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet (who recorded two seminal but under appreciated records for Blue Note in the late 1960's).