Bebop Hits the
Boulevard
Like good restaurants and smart people, jazz
is crossing the causeway
By Nina Korman
Special to Biscayne Times
Published January 2008
Late on a Thursday evening in December, ceiling fans twirl lazily and music blares loudly Upstairs at the Van Dyke. A young man and woman, seemingly on a date, sit on cushiony
chairs at a marble café table. About six other patrons stand or sit at the mosaic tile and onyx bar, the top of which glows ethereally in the dimly lit room. A flashy bartender spins bottles behind his back as he makes fancy cocktails. Those who arrive hoping to hear some jazz will leave disappointed. The dance tunes drowning out conversation are emanating not from a live band but from two turntables placed on the shiny black grand piano in the room’s northwest corner. Three DJs —Chilly, Chris, and Sela V — are taking turns spinning records during the evening now dubbed Residence Lounge. Live jazz music Upstairs at the Van Dyke had become history just two days earlier. Less than a week before that, an e-mail, with the words “New Year’s Eve” in the subject line popped into inboxes all over Miami. The beginning of the note from Don Wilner, bass player and long-time musical director for Upstairs at the Van Dyke, didn’t mention any New Year’s celebration. In fact a couple of sentences enthusiastically announced, “Live Jazz! New Time: Monday & Tuesday, 8 to Midnight.” Scrolling down, readers found a personal note from Wilner, thanking the Van Dyke’s owner, Mark Soyka, and all who had attended performances there for more than a dozen years for their support. Wilner went on to explain that part of the Van Dyke business had been sold recently. The second-floor room had been renovated by the new owners, and new styles of music would soon reign there. Jazz would move to Soyka restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard, at least for New Year’s Eve. After that, it seemed anyone’s guess.
In 1994 Mark Soyka opened the Van Dyke Café on the southeast corner of Lincoln Road and Jefferson Avenue. Once the real estate office of Miami Beach cofounder Carl Fisher, the seven-story, 1924 building had been transformed by Soyka and now had a ground-floor café with indoor/outdoor seating and a full bar. A second-floor music room featured an abbreviated bar, café tables, delicate bentwood chairs, and a small stage. People enjoying the music at a table paid a modest cover charge. A seat at the bar only required ordering a drink. Wilner, who a few years earlier had often played at the Music Room, part of Soyka’s News Café on Ocean
Drive, began performing upstairs with flamboyant vocalist Toni Bishop. By the spring of 1995, 
Soyka trusted Wilner to both play and book acts. 

Soyka’s trust was well placed. Seven nights a week high-caliber jazz artists crowded onto the tiny
stage, while the room often filled so beyond capacity that patrons overflowed onto the stairway. Among the many local musicians Wilner hired were vocalists Beverly Barkley, Wendy Pedersen, Nicole Henry, and LeNard Rutledge; the musical Orta brothers, pianist Mike and bassist Nicky; and saxophonist Jesse Jones, Jr., and his brother the trumpeter Melton Mustafa. Wilner also put together and led well-received bands like one specializing in hard-bop jazz and others devoted to Brazilian jazz. An all-star roster of greats also graced the Van Dyke, including James Moody, Cedar Walton, Mose Allison, Mark Murphy, John Hicks, Bill Charlap, Grady Tate, and Toots Thielemans. Since 2000, each May the JVC Jazz Festival Miami Beach has programmed several
shows featuring major players there too. 

During the past few months, it was apparent that things had changed at the Van Dyke. Graziano Sbroggio — mastermind behind the highly successful Segafredo Café and Spris, Tiramesu, and
Le Bon restaurants also on Lincoln Road — bought into the operation at the beginning
of 2007. By June the upstairs space was getting a facelift. In August the new room (sans stage) and a revised musical program highlighting DJs spinning loungey sounds were unveiled. Wilner’s
jazz would be limited to just twice per week: Monday and Tuesday, traditionally
slow nights. 

In late November, he learned that December 2007 would be the last
month for jazz. “I’m not complaining,” Wilner says. “How many local musicians can say they
had a steady 13-year gig?” For New Year’s Eve, Wilner, Rutledge, and Mike Orta performed on the mainland at Soyka, but that was one night only. Jazz at Soyka is something Wilner would love to see as a fixture, much the same way it was on Miami Beach. And Mark Soyka’s executive
assistant, Ryan York, confirms that his boss is considering devoting a portion of
Friday and Saturday evenings at the restaurant to jazz, a move that heartens
locals who regularly used to trek across the causeway.
 

“I think it would be great idea,” says Miami Shores resident and jazz fan Luis
Alvarez, himself a former dance-music DJ. “I’m a regular at Soyka now, and I’d
probably go even more if there was jazz. We need more live-music places on this
side of the causeway.” A variety of venues in which to hear live music is an integral part of
any vibrant city. However, over the past decade, Miami has barely had more than one club showcasing live jazz, and not much live music of any type in general. It wasn’t always that
way, along the Biscayne Corridor in particular. Beginning in the 1940s, Biscayne
Boulevard became home to many gathering places and became quite the hotspot. Open-air entertainment under the stars was a regular feature of the Merry Go Round, which was
located on the Boulevard at 87th Street. The club boasted the largest wooden dance floor in the South, able to accommodate 2000 people, who could also dine and enjoy a floor show. Boulevard restaurants usually contained a cozy bar where a combo or solo pianist would perform.
 

“Some were very sexy places,” says local historian Seth Bramson, who in the early 1980s
was general manager of another sexy spot, the Playboy Club, located just off Biscayne Boulevard on the Little River. Motels like the Vagabond, the Admiral Vee, and the Apache often had
excellent eateries or smoky lounges that would host local musical luminaries and nationally recognized entertainers. As succulent steaks were being served at the Shalimar restaurant, comedian Shecky Greene would be coaxing laughs from the crowd at the Playboy Club, and saxophonist Jet Nero would be mesmerizing the audience at the Gold Dust Lounge across the street. Bramson fondly recalls the Boulevard’s motels as also having “coffee shops, with their own followings.”

When not catering to a vacationing family seeking flapjacks or a grilledcheese sandwich, those lunch counters served a jolt of caffeine to lounge lizards sobering up after a long night of listening
and imbibing. Nightlife action, at least of the legal sort, died out along the Biscayne Corridor over the last three decades. And at the moment, it seems there’s more live music off the Boulevard than on. In downtown Miami, on First Street, the Italian restaurant Soya & Pomodoro
offers Latin jazz, straight-ahead jazz, and bossa nova on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights respectively. Churchill’s, on NE Second Avenue and 55th Street, known mostly as a rock-and-roll club, has featured jazz regularly on Monday nights for the past seven five years. On
that evening, the place undergoes an almost genteel transformation: Patrons young and old sip drinks quietly at tables and listen intently as the band plays. At One Ninety, on NE 54th Street near N. Miami Avenue, owner/chef/former musician Alan Hughes occasionally picks up
his guitar on a weeknight, and hosts local jazz and international musicians on weekend evenings. 

At the venerable Magnum Lounge, on NE 79th Street and 7th Avenue, co-owner Kurt Schmidt
notes that live music is featured “every night we’re open.” That would be six evenings per week (closed Mondays). If a vocal duo isn’t belting out everything “from Broadway tunes to the Beatles,” he says, then a pianist is inspiring diners and drinkers to join him in singing rousing
songs from their seats. On Biscayne Boulevard itself, at 69th Street, the restaurant Uva 69, which coowner Sinuhé Vega says has gone from sandwiches and salads to fine dining, goes the DJ route on Fridays and Saturdays but has recently presented live jazz-funk from the Cleveland Jones band on late Sunday afternoons. At 77th Street and Biscayne, acclaimed chef Kris Wessel will open Red Light Regional Dining Lounge on January 8 in Motel Blu, the former Gold
Dust Motel. He’s also renovating the former lounge downstairs for an April opening.
A New Orleans native, Wessel grew up surrounded by great live music and hopes to present jazz and R&B regularly.  “This is a musical desert for me,” he says with a laugh, referring to the Biscayne Corridor. “I have to go to Tobacco Road every three months to feel like there’s culture
around here!”
 

While Mark Soyka ponders presenting live jazz at his namesake restaurant, more music will come from his newest venture opening in the 55th Street Station complex’s courtyard. The News Lounge, Bar, and Café, slated to fully debut by Valentine’s Day, in Ryan York’s words
will “primarily be a bar and a lounge, with a small European-style café attached to it.”
Light fare and drinks served late into the night will be on the menu, as will music nearly every day of the week. The program, a mix of DJs and live tunes, has not been finalized, but jazzman Don Wilner has been promised six Wednesdays, beginning on January 23, to book as he sees fit.
For live music fans, it’s all a hopeful sign that the Biscayne Corridor will once again offer the high-quality entertainment for which it was once so celebrated. “With all the changes and the beautification to the area,” says York, “it’s time has come — finally.” If you agree, send an e-mail to York: ryanyorksobe@aol.com to express
your support for live music.
Feedback: letters@biscaynetimes.com

BEST JAZZ CLUB 
Upstairs at the Van Dyke Café 
Published on May 12, 2005 
Under the able musical direction of bassist Don Wilner, Upstairs at the Van Dyke remains Miami's premier jazz club. No other venue comes close in terms of consistency -- 365 days per year. (Check the Website for calendars and newsletters.) And in terms of consistently high quality, nothing can match the club's rotating cast of regulars: Wilner, Mike Orta, Rose Max, Wendy Pedersen, Goetz Kujack, Sammy Figueroa, Turk Mauro, José Negroni. If they're not onstage, you'll likely find a well-known visiting artist. Among those Wilner has brought to the comfortable room above Mark Soyka's landmark café: John Abercrombie, Eric Alexander, Harry Allen, Mose Allison, Freddy Cole, George Coleman, Kenny Drew, Eddie Henderson, John Hicks, Tania Maria, James Moody, Mark Murphy, Houston Person, Norman Simmons, Grady Tate, Toots Thielemans, and Cedar Walton. 

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2005-05-12/bars-and-clubs/best-jazz-club/ 

Don Wilner 
Figments of My Imagination self-released 
By John Anderson 
Published on February 10, 2005 
· 

Don Wilner is well known in these parts as the house bassist at the Van Dyke Café, the glue at the center of Miami's forever endangered jazz scene. He has recently issued a new album of jazz standards, Figments of My Imagination, that's heavy on the Brazilian, with several classics by Antonio Carlos Jobim, including "Mohave" and "A Felicidade." The music is consistently strong, bearing a warm chamber-jazz sound, and Wilner shows off his ample chops by bowing and plucking his many solos with cool precision. He's aided by a supporting cast that includes local jazz stalwarts such as singer Rose Max and pianist Mike Orta, the latter delivering transcendent performances that seemingly soar off the disc. Check out Wilner's version of Duke Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood," a slow, swinging groove that proves our local jazz scene doesn't suffer a complete lack of talent. 
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2005-02-10/music/don-wilner/ 

Where's the Jazz, Man? 
South Florida's jazz scene has undergone a slow, steady demise. Can it be resurrected? 
By Abel Folgar 
Published on September 18, 2003 

 . . .In spite of the DJ/dance music takeover, Tobacco Road continues to operate with a weekly offering of jazz and blues because it has always drawn a fiercely loyal crowd. Another place that can offer a similar claim is the Van Dyke Café. Not as old as the Road, the Van Dyke sustains a weekly jazz/blues format because Don Wilner, an old-school South Florida jazzman, books the talent. His experience as a session and headlining musician means he's connected and able to woo out-of-town performers to play at his venue.. . . 
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2003-09-18/music/where-s-the-jazz-man/1 
 

Playing It Safe 
This was the JVC Jazz Festival's first year here, but the sounds were nothing new 
By Nina Korman 
Published on May 24, 2001 
. . . At the same time young pianist Bill Charlap sat at the keys for the first of two sets upstairs at the Van Dyke. 
Over the last three days, the room had played host to packed crowds for saxman Bobby Watson, flautist Dave Valentin with percussionist Sammy Figueroa, and pianist Cedar Walton with saxophonist Vincent Herring. Sharing the stage with Charlap this night were drummer/trumpet player Barry Reis, drummer/vocalist Grady Tate, and bass player/Van Dyke musical director Don Wilner. While seemingly enthusiastic patrons crowded the tables and stood three-deep at the bar, it seemed no matter how good the music was (and it often was sublime), many of them couldn't -- or wouldn't -- keep their mouths shut. That despite early admonitions from Wilner that the Van Dyke possessed a "no-talking policy." Perhaps it's the peril of listening in a place that advocates a "yes, drinking policy" where boozehounds consider the entertainment nothing more than background music. A shame for them. Moments of quiet occurred when Tate emerged from behind his kit and wrapped his lustrous baritone around "It Might as Well Be Spring," playfully breaking into a strain of "Let It Snow," and then scatted up a storm during Miles Davis's "All Blues." Wilner, Reis, and Charlap added delicate tasteful touches. Alone and unbridled on solos such as "Body and Soul," Charlap truly sparkled, breaking out from the constraints of his recordings. Son of a Broadway composer and a big-band singer, the 34-year-old pianist has an almost instinctual sense when it comes to interpreting standards. That was patently obvious during the evening's shining moment, as Tate crooned Billy Strayhorn's poignant "Lush Life," and an astonishing silence overtook the room. 
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2001-05-24/music/playing-it-safe/2 
 

Best House Band 
The Don Wilner Quintet 
Published on May 17, 2001 
To hear these guys smoke through a number on Tuesday nights is to infuse your life with a sudden dash of Fifties cool. You'll walk away feeling sharper. You'll want to crease your trousers and wear shades inside. Eddie Higgins's fingers float over the keyboard like darting minnows in a tide pool. Gilly DiBenedetto summons mesmerizingly fluid tones from his sax. And Wilner sets the foundation for it all with his upright bass. Half an hour or so into the set, Tony Fernandez's gilded pipes warble Frank Sinatra tunes with such effortless grace, you'd think you had just stepped off the set of Ocean's Eleven. Master violinist Federico Britos ignites his strings. Depending on the night Lenny Steinberg or James Martin will be tapping the drums. Put a boutonniere in your lapel, snap your fingers, and order a martini. One word to the wise: Higgins, who has recorded with the likes of Stan Getz and Dizzy Gillespie, spends his summers on Cape Cod. But fret not: He returns in the fall. 
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2001-05-17/music/best-house-band/ 
 

Best Jazz Artist 
Don Wilner 
Published on May 13, 1999 
Classically trained on the bass, Don Wilner may seem like a musical nerd. He holds a doctorate in music from the University of Miami (where he taught for many years) and he has published numerous articles about jazz performance and pedagogy. But when he plays in the Van Dyke Café's upstairs bar, he reveals himself to be the heppest of hepcats, a jazz man through and through. As the Van Dyke's musical coordinator, he keeps the room humming seven days a week. As in-house bassist he's there more often than not, playing along with some of the hottest names in the jazz world: Mose Allison, Mark Murphy, Johnny O'Neal, and Grady Tate to name a few. Whether accompanying greats, performing with the members of his own hard-bop ensemble (currently fielding offers from major record labels), or letting loose on a solo during a performance by his trio (James Martin and Mark Marineau), Wilner swings, sways, grooves, takes it seriously, takes it fun, grimaces, smiles, sweats, and gives the impression he's loving every minute of it. His recently released album, the eclectic Mysterious Beauty, features jazzy takes on classical tunes (themes from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen), standards (Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" and Harold Arlen's "Ill Wind"), and bebop classics (Charlie Parker's "Dexterity") and recently earned a rave review from the esteemed Jazz Times magazine. 
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1999-05-13/music/best-jazz-artist/ 
 

All That Brass 
By Nina Korman 
Published on August 27, 1998 
Close your eyes and listen. You could be in any jazz room in New York City. Open your eyes, take a look around, and you may still be fooled, for the venue has the ambiance of a sophisticated Big Apple jazz club. But this isn't New York, it's Miami Beach. And what you're listening to isn't just jazz, which some severely misinformed people associate with John Tesh and Kenny G. This is hard bop, or what Lincoln Road's Van Dyke Cafe bills as the Hard Bop Special. And special it is. 
Six musicians, three sets. The only band in town playing hard bop on a regular basis. The idea came from Don Wilner, the distinguished bassist, bandleader, and sideman who, as the Cafe's musical director since early 1995, has pretty much been given free rein to program anything he wants, seven nights a week. "I thought about it in June, and I put the band down for two nights to see how it went," Wilner says. "The first night we played, it went great. After that I began to realize it was a good idea to do more." 
So Wilner soon increased the hard-bop gigs to three Thursdays a month and the occasional weekend. His instinct to use more musicians than the club's usual duo or trio was on target. "The music usually involves two or three horns, and I wanted to start using more horns because I think that's a sign of a real good jazz club," he explains. "Basically our nights have been dominated by piano trios with a singer or one horn. I wanted that sound of horns playing in harmony. It just has more impact. It's a typical sound you would associate with a jazz club." 
The high level of musicianship at the Van Dyke definitely puts it in the league of some of the best jazz clubs in the country, but it does differ in one respect: the cover charge. For a mere three dollars on Thursday and six on the weekend (though that amount is soon going to rise slightly), audience members can spend three hours listening to some of Miami's most outstanding players. 
The band is composed of Wilner himself on upright bass and five other first-rate musicians with whom he has worked on and off for many years: drummer James Martin and pianist Mark Marineau (on other nights they perform as the Don Wilner Trio); Pete Minger, a former soloist with the Count Basie Orchestra, on trumpet; and Dave Hubbard, who has performed with cats such as Ray Charles and George Benson, on tenor saxophone. Alto saxophonist by night and bailiff during the day Jesse Jones, Jr., who last year released the well-received CD Soul Serenade on the Berkeley, California-based jazz label Fantasy Records, rounds out the sextet. 
Their sound is expectedly jazzy and surprisingly pleasant. Make no mistake, the "bop" in hard bop is not that of the bebop variety. That style of music -- relentless, bombastic, to some inscrutable -- marked a boundary-stretching moment in jazz history during the Forties when it seemed there was nowhere else to go but crazy. Bebop flourished in the 52nd Street nightclubs of New York City, a major center of musical experimentation. It summons images of trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie and alto sax whiz Charlie Parker honking and blowing, improvising over frenetic chord changes, transforming and sometimes transcending melody by twisting, turning, and expanding. The playing was complicated and technically impressive, yet unlistenable for many; the style eventually prompted a more accessible alternative -- hard bop. 
"Bebop was sort of scientific and theoretical music," says Wilner, "and hard bop was a reaction to that. Although it contains elements of bebop, it also has other things that make it easy to tap your foot to or sing along with. I've been finding out that a lot of people are afraid the music is going to be like bebop -- loud and obnoxious. But hard bop is really bebop taken not a step further, but a step to the side." 
Hence the sound -- bold, boisterous, a smoothing-out of its rough-edged predecessor blended with a smidgen of blues and a splash of gospel. The rhythm section does more than complacently keep the beat: It pounds out syncopated three- and four-beat patterns, often lasting several measures, weaving a musical tapestry on which soloists can improvise melodies. 
At the height of its popularity in the mid- to late Fifties, hard bop was played most successfully by drummer Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers, and by the likes of alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, drummer Max Roach, and trumpeters Lee Morgan, Clifford Brown, and Miles Davis. That was mainly on the East Coast; on the West Coast cool jazz (think Dave Brubeck's "Take Five") prevailed. Hard bop faded in the early Seventies as musicians grew bolder and drifted into free jazz, post-bop, and fusion, and incorporated diverse influences such as rock and funk. 
Fifty years after it first blared onto the scene, though, hard bop sounds as fresh as ever. On a recent night in the crowded upstairs room at the Van Dyke, the six-piece finds itself playing to a rare audience -- a silent one. Usually patrons are more interested in listening to their conversations than to the music. But not this night. Lounging on love seats or sitting in wicker chairs, listeners of all ages are captivated during the first of three hourlong sets. Overhead fans twirl slowly in the ceiling's octagonal insets. The band breaks into the Duke Pearson number "Jeannine." At the ivories, Marineau, in the spare style of the great Bill Evans, tinkles gently. Wilner sits on a bar stool and plucks away at his bass, sweat rolling down his forehead. Minger blows a pure and clean melody on his trumpet. Toes tap on the oriental rugs, heads bob up and down, hands slap thighs. The performers interact instinctively; when you're a pro, you're a pro, and they're all you'll hear at the Van Dyke, dig? 
"We aren't a place [for musicians] to learn. We use just the very best guys," Wilner explains. "We aren't interested in beginners or amateurs. This is not a jam session. A lot of people come here and are disappointed they can't sit in. Once upon a time in jazz, people would learn by sitting in at places, but that doesn't happen much any more. I'm not sure why, but maybe it's because so many people sat in that the music sounded like crap and people ended up going to a different restaurant where they could eat in peace. People get put off by that. If the music is bad, it's like a root canal." 
Listeners' mouths may be agape, but there is no painful dental work going on here. Abruptly the tune slows down and Minger is left alone by his horn-playing brethren to front a very mellow version of the Haggart-Burke standard "What's New?" He improvises smoothly, his gentle tone lulls the audience into a relaxed state, a mirror of his own temperament. 
"Being able to play in a group with good musicians and being able to play music you always dreamed of playing is the best part about this," Minger exclaims. "We all have pretty much the same interests and we feed off each other. We entertain each other. It's great to play music of that era, and we have good chemistry." 
Electricity is evident when Jones and Hubbard step back onstage and the band begins the complex Charles Mingus tune "Fables of Faubus." The song, long and drawn out, flows seamlessly. Horn parts are plaintive, wailing, grim. Each musician takes a solo. Then saxophonist Jones stops blowing, puts his horn aside, and begins to sing. He calls, the band responds. After that the combo embarks on Miles Davis's "Freddy Freeloader," which sounds almost identical to the version from his 1959 classic, Kind of Blue. 
"Basically we are playing the arrangements you'd hear on records, which have become pretty standard," Wilner says. "But there's plenty of improvising. One of the things that's nice about this band is that when one horn player is improvising, the other two guys are making up a background behind him. That's kind of a diversion from a strict hard-bop thing. We do a lot more riffing than the hard boppers did." 
Although the style may not be unadulterated hard bop, the songs played at the Van Dyke still don't bear comparison to the music contemporary-jazz radio stations bombard their listeners with today. "Everybody is playing that Kmart jazz these days," says Jones, "but the stuff that we do is old school; it's very satisfying. When I play my horn I'm conversing. I'm telling people something. The horn is an extension of my body, my mind, and my soul, and with it I'm telling people all about me. I view it as a spiritual thing; it goes from me to them. When I see people are moving, grooving, and tapping their foot, the connection is made." 
For Wilner the bond with the audience is important, but their musical comprehension is also essential. "I want everybody to have a good time," he says. "I want them to enjoy jazz. A lot of times jazz is over everybody's heads, and it's very easy for musicians to get over people's heads. People can be sitting there and have absolutely no idea what's going on. We're trying to find a nice balance between what's good music and what people can deal with, what they can understand." 
The Hard Bop Special takes place three Thursdays a month and, among other occasional weekends, Friday and Saturday, August 28 and 29, at Van Dyke Cafe, 846 Lincoln Rd, Miami Beach. Showtimes are 10:00 p.m., 11:30 p.m., and 1:00 a.m. Cover charge is $6 

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1998-08-27/music/all-that-brass/