The band's name, 40Twenty, has nothing to do with the John Deere 4020 family-farm tractor, extraordinary long-range vision or the numerical code for smoking marijuana. It's a Brooklyn jazz group with the trombonist Jacob Garchik, the pianist Jacob Sacks, the bassist Dave Ambrosio and the drummer Vinnie Sperrazza. The name refers to the 40-20 set, a grueling 1950s nightclub-booking practice in which jazz groups played up to five 40-minute sets a night, separated by 20-minute breaks.
40Twenty is doing a bearable approximation: two hourlong sets a night. More to the point, it's following a related practice from those old days, which is to hold down the same gig in the same place for two weeks straight. The place is Ibeam, a performance space, rehearsal room and studio in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. It doesn't have a bar, which is too bad, but the sound of the cubelike room is far more precise than anything you'd ever hear in a bar, or at most stages around the city. Without trying, you'll hear the music closely.
The two-week stretch is significant. Jazz clubs hardly ever book two-week runs anymore; the economics aren't right. (The big exception is the Village Vanguard, which does it a few times a year.) Why were there so many great groups--not just musicians, but groups--in the 1950s? The answer has something to do with more clubs across the country, and something to do with musicians of that time having grown up understanding jazz as vernacular culture. But it's also because bands regularly played two or more sets for two or more weeks straight at the same club. That's how a band develops its musical posture in a hurry.
40Twenty is doing a bearable approximation: two hourlong sets a night. More to the point, it's following a related practice from those old days, which is to hold down the same gig in the same place for two weeks straight. The place is Ibeam, a performance space, rehearsal room and studio in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. It doesn't have a bar, which is too bad, but the sound of the cubelike room is far more precise than anything you'd ever hear in a bar, or at most stages around the city. Without trying, you'll hear the music closely.
The two-week stretch is significant. Jazz clubs hardly ever book two-week runs anymore; the economics aren't right. (The big exception is the Village Vanguard, which does it a few times a year.) Why were there so many great groups--not just musicians, but groups--in the 1950s? The answer has something to do with more clubs across the country, and something to do with musicians of that time having grown up understanding jazz as vernacular culture. But it's also because bands regularly played two or more sets for two or more weeks straight at the same club. That's how a band develops its musical posture in a hurry.
