Blue Note Opens New Club in Los Angeles: ‘This Will Give the L.A. Music Scene a Facelift’

At a time when many music industry sectors are undergoing consolidation, Blue Note is expanding its footprint domestically and globally. In June, the brand partnered for the first time with the LA Phil to present the Blue Note Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl (formerly known as the Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival and, before that, the long-running Playboy Jazz Festival). Now tonight (Aug. 14), the brand will celebrate the grand opening of its new club in Los Angeles.

To jumpstart the grand opening, a private VIP party was held at Blue Note Los Angeles last evening (Aug. 13). Calling the occasion “an historic night,” Blue Note Entertainment Group president Steven Bensusan added, “It’s been a long time coming.” Both he and his brother, Blue Note Entertainment Group COO Tsion Bensusan, thanked all involved in bringing the club to fruition — and also introduced their father Danny, who opened the first Blue Note Jazz Club in New York in 1981. Rounding out the evening, artist Robert Glasper and surprise guests — among them Ledisi, Lalah Hathaway and Terrace Martin — performed before an audience that included Dr. Dre, veteran music industry executives Jimmy Iovine and Don Was and Abbot Elementary’s Quinta Brunson.

Located on Hollywood’s famed Sunset Boulevard, Blue Note LA will kick off its grand opening with Glasper headlining. The new club extends the five-time Grammy winner’s ongoing partnership/creative ambassador role with Blue Note. The club’s upcoming lineup (playing two sets at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.) includes rising and established acts like Alex Isley, Mayer Hawthorne, Ravi Coltrane, Killer Mike and Adam Blackstone. The venue itself features two performance spaces: the main showroom, which accommodates 200 people, and a B side room with a 100-person capacity.  The venue will also serve brunch and dinner through the week. Blue Note Entertainment Group has also partnered exclusively with Mastercard to give cardholders special access to various experiences at Blue Note LA.

Blue Note LA joins the company’s other stateside clubs in New York, Honolulu and Napa, Calif. Currently under construction is another new club in London’s West End. It will be the latest addition to Blue Note’s family of global venues in Tokyo, Rio, San Paulo, Milan, Bejing and Shanghai. The clubs in New York, L.A., Napa, Honolulu and London are owned by the Blue Note Entertainment Group; the others are licensees.

Around the corner, in the meantime, is the Glasper-curated Blue Note Jazz Festival (Napa) / Black Radio Experience (Aug. 29-31). Now in its fourth year, the festival will present performances by The Roots, Questlove, Jazmine Sullivan, Hiatus Kaiyote and Esperanza Spalding. Ahead of that gig, Glasper says the “outpouring” of people calling him about Blue Note LA has been “amazing. People are itching for a cool place to play in L.A. because so many of those places have closed down. This will give the L.A. music scene a facelift; it’s a breath of fresh air plus another place to be creative. I have so many ideas for the club because L.A. is full of crazy talent.”

One of those ideas is personified by the club’s diverse artist lineup over the coming months. “I feel like for a long time, jazz has been in a corner over by itself, like nobody wants to play with the jazz kids,” says Glasper. “But now, little by little, I think people are coming over and playing with them. It’s becoming one big family, and that’s awesome. Jazz is a spirit and a vibe. So any genre of music can encompass jazz. It’s about the spirit of improvisation and the spirit of being in the moment. That’s the heartbeat of jazz.”

That sentiment is in keeping with the storied legacy of the first Blue Note Jazz Club. Holding court in New York’s West Village for the last 44 years, the club has become a beloved cultural institution thanks to the myriad icons and contemporary artists who’ve performed. From there, one of Blue Note’s earlier spinoffs is the New York Jazz Festival, which marked its 14^th year this summer (May 27-July 2). Staged at multiple city venues including Blue Note, Town Hall, Central Park SummerStage, Celebrate Brooklyn at Prospect Park and Sony Hall, this year’s slate boasted Grace Jones and Janelle Monáe, Branford Marsalis, Kenny Garrett and Tank & the Bangas. Among the headliners at Blue Note’s inaugural jazz festival at the Hollywood Bowl (June 14-15) were Jones, The Isley Brothers, WILLOW, Stanley Clarke, Dee Dee Bridgewater and De La Soul.

Overseeing the talent bookings and programs for the clubs as well as the New York and Napa festivals is Blue Note Entertainment Group’s director of programming Alex Kurland (Note: Blue Note has naming rights for the Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival. The LA Phil handles the majority of the bookings with collaboration from Blue Note).

Kurland says the L.A. club has been in the works for years between searching for the right venue location  and other logistics. “Blue Note is very artist-led, and it felt like there was an opening and a need in L.A. for the kind of thing that we do in New York and through Blue Note conceptually and programming-wise,” explains Kurland. “So this felt like good timing now for a lot of different reasons. The desire for these intimate experiences — both impactful and meaningful — is so important now. It’s a very holistic connection between what’s also happening in New York, what’s happening with the Napa festival and now L.A. with the influence of all the music that’s coming from there.”

Kurland also notes that in booking talent, the Blue Note philosophy goes beyond genre or style categories. “What grabs me first, regardless of genre, is the artists’ voice in their [musical] story. It’s about feeling the voice, the story and tone. There are so many talented artists that transcend categorization by style or genre. When you think about great artists period, regardless of age or era, it’s about the voice within the music that speaks and what it’s saying; something that’s representative of who they are and their storytelling. That’s what moves me.”

Moving forward, Kurland says Blue Note is eyeing other club locale possibilities including Paris, Boston and Detroit. But right now, he’s leaning into the excitement the L.A. club is already sparking. “The approach is less about just filling in dates on the calendar and being very intentional about programming that’s meaningful and has purpose. If that’s not the priority and objective, then nothing else matters. That’s the mantra.

“Sometimes when older and younger artists come in, they have a sentimental connection to how jazz inspired them,” Kurland continues. “Or a memory that stems back to hearing a family member play someone like a Dizzy Gillespie. Flash forward 30 years later and that artist is playing at the Blue Note where Dizzy stood. Those kinds of sentimental and emotional experiences are the goal too — being able to feel something deeper than the transaction of just playing a gig.”