INN LATE JAZZ JULY SCHEDULE

Friday, July 4- NO JAZZ TONIGHT. HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Saturday, July 5- NO JAZZ TONIGHT, CLOSED FOR PRIVATE PARTY.

Friday, July 11- The Chris Coogan Quartet. Chris on keyboard and vocals; Jim Royle on drums; John Mobilio on bass; and Rex Denton on trumpet. Here is an exciting mix of American roots music: jazz, gospel, boogie-woogie and originals. Come for the fantastic entertainment of one of Fairfield County's greats. www.cooganmusic.com.

Saturday, July 12- The Harold Zinno Quintet with Nicole. Harold on trumpet and flugelhorn; Billy Cofrancis on sax; John Mobilio on bass; Jack Varanelli on drums; and Doug Schlink on piano; plus the great Nicole on vocals. Swinging versions of your favorite jazz standards plus the exciting jazz vocals of Nicole. Every member of the band is a virtuoso, it's don't miss evening of swinging jazz! www.nicolepasternak.com

Friday, July 18-The Joseph Sinaguglia Quartet. We welcome back this hot new group to the line-up. Joe on acoustic bass, Josh Sette, piano; Thierry Arpino, Drums; and Josh Bruneau, Trumpet. For fans of jazz, from bop to contemporary, come hear these exciting young players!

Saturday, July 19-Tom Devino Quartet with Maydie Myles. Rob Aries: Piano; Kris Jensen: Saxophones; Henry Lugo; Bass; Tom Devino: Drums; Maydie Myles: Vocals. Jazz with a soulful sensibility, Maydie is not just a singer, but a true entertainer! Jazz, particularly the Great American Songbook (with a scattering of R&B and soul) is what she does best. Her years of experience and big heart make each song a memorable experience. Don't miss this evening of great singing with a great quartet!

Friday, July 25-The Arti Dixson Quartet. This great drummer has played with such remarkable musicians as Larry Coryell, Randy Brecker, Bill Evans, Randy Klein, Marion Meadows, Pete Levin, Eartha Kitt, Miles Davis and Michael Bolton. Most memorably he played Carnegie Hall with Ahmad Jamal and then toured and recorded with the jazz piano legend. Leading from the drum set, Arti will give us a memorable evening of percussive, complex and rhythmic jazz. Another singular evening of jazz at Silvermine! www.artidixson.com 

Saturday, July 26-Joyce DiCamillo and the Summer Jazz Workshop '08 Faculty. Joyce on piano; Tony Kodlek on trumpet; John Mastroianni on alto; Chip Jackson on bass and Thierry Arpino on drums (and maybe a few surprise guests too). The faculty of this renowned summer jazz program plays together after teaching and coaching their students. It's always a remarkable evening of jazz from great players.

INN LATE JAZZ AUGUST SCHEDULE

Friday, August 1- The Rob Silvan Quartet. Rob on piano, Rick Quintanal on drums, Don Wallace on bass, Chris Coulter on sax. Rob leads his terrific players in a blending of standards, tropical styles and a few original tunes. Its great swinging jazz! www.robsilvanmusic.com

Saturday, August 2- The Dave Samuels Trio. Dave Samuels on vibes; Massimo Biolcati on bass and Vince Cherico on drums. Dave comes in with a little different arrangement for what promises to be (as always) a great jazz evening of original and creative jazz from this Grammy award mallet player. www.dsamuels.com 

Friday, August 8- The Ted Rosenthal Quartet. This world-class pianist is a consummate jazz artist. He never fails to enthrall our audiences with his rich, inventive renditions. He has performed with many of the jazz greats of our time, including Gerry Mulligan, Art Farmer, Phil Woods, Bob Brookmeyer, Jon Faddis, Benny Golson and James Moody and has released 11 recordings as a leader. This will be an evening of very special piano jazz. www.tedrosenthal.com

Saturday August 9- The Harold Zinno Sextet. Harold on trumpet and flugelhorn; Ralph Lalama AND Billy Cofrancis on saxs; John Mobilio on bass; Jack Varanelli on drums; and Doug Schlink on piano. This will be an extraordinary evening with two sax masters up front, the swinging style of Billy meets the Bop virtuoso Ralph - sparks will fly! www.myspace.com/haroldzinno

Friday, August 15- The Chris Coogan Quartet. Chris on keyboard and vocals; Jim Royle on drums; John Mobilio on bass; and Rex Denton on trumpet. Here is an exciting mix of American roots music: jazz, gospel, boogie-woogie and originals. Come for the fantastic entertainment of one of Fairfield County's greats. www.cooganmusic.com

Saturday, August 16-The John Cutrone Quartet. John leads from the drums, featuring John Bailey on Trumpet, with Phil Bowler on bass and Paul Mariconda on piano. John always brings a great group of players who will swing though your favorite standards. www.johncutrone.com 

Friday, August 22-The Giacomo Gates Quartet. Vocals by the great song stylist Giacomo; and exciting side men Tony Lombardozzi on guitar, Ron Vincent on drums and Phil Bowler on bass. Giacomo had an acclaimed run at Dizzy's Club in New York this spring and his recent recording, Luminosity, is on the jazz charts and play lists. You'll love his authentic jazz and Bop style. www.giacomogates.com

Saturday, August 23-The Marlene Verplanck Quartet. Marlene singing, with Tex Arnold, piano, Jeff Fuller, bass, Ron Vincent, drums. This seasoned singer gives loving care to the great American songbook. Her crystal clear voice rings out with the tunes you love. www.marleneverplanck.com 

Friday, August 29-The Cookie Thomas Quartet Cookie on vocals; Arti Dixson on drums; Phil Bowler on bass; Joe McWilliams on piano. We love the smooth sound of Cookie's jazz renditions and his side men can't be beat! www.cookiethomas.com

Saturday, August 30- The David Janeway Quartet. David on piano, Harvie Harvie S. on bass, Gerry Malkin on sax and flute; and Tony Jefferson. This will be an evening of sparkling standards and original songs too from this very individual player and his great sidemen. www.davidjaneway.com 
 

$5.00 Music Charge - One item minimum per person -
No Music charge or minimum for dinner guests.
Call for reservations and directions 203-847-4558

The bands play from 8:00 to 10:30 pm on Friday and Saturday.  Reservations are taken for dinner and jazz.  Drinks and snacks in the lounge are on a drop in basis.  There is an $8.00 music charge and a one item minimum in the lounge (no music charge with dinner). 

For directions and information call 847-4558 or visit www.SilvermineTavern.com.  

Plus  Dixieland Jazz Every Thursday 6:30 to 9:30

 A complete dinner for only $19.95, the New England Buffet is a Silvermine Tradition for over 50 years.  Start with a delicious house made soup, and then help yourself to the salads, side dishes, main courses, and dessert at the buffet tables. 

Live Dixieland Jazz with our New England Buffet every Thursday, 6:30 to 9:30.  Enjoy a buffet dinner feast with the toe tapping, knee slapping rhythms of The Bearcats.  A six piece band that has played Dixieland together for years, The Bearcats have made numerous recordings and are well known at the Traditional Jazz Festivals throughout the Northeast.  On the last Thursday of the month, the Constitution Jazz Band fills the restaurant with their Dixieland sounds.

I Hear a Rhapsody: “Inn Late Jazz” and More at the Silvermine Tavern
By Thomas Staudter

A few recent snapshots, so to speak, of music and magic experienced at the “Inn Late Jazz” soirees held on Thursday through Saturday evenings at the Silvermine Tavern in Norwalk:

     *Mallet master (and Fairfield County neighbor) Dave Samuels displaying an abundance of flash and flavor on the vibraphone while leading his quartet through two sets of high-energy Latin jazz. An arrangement of Freddie Hubbard’s “Up Jumped Spring” found Samuels locked into a killer montuno with his rhythm section that established, once again, the beauty of repetition.

     *Facing a standing-room audience, Giacomo Gates shows why he’s fast becoming jazz’s most talked about singer. A practitioner of “vocalese,” a difficult singing style in which intoned lyrics are substituted for well-known instrumental solos, the Bridgeport native swings through fifteen finger-poppin’ tunes, accompanied by famed pianist Don Friedman. When Gates offers up his own “bass” and “trombone” improvisations, he brings the house down.

     *Greenwich resident Joyce DiCamillo, the widely popular pianist-composer and educator, brings in a new rhythm section comprised of two freshly minted music school grads to join her and alto saxophonist John Mastroianni, producing a curious buzz in yet another SRO audience. The young cats, full of vigor and happy to show they belong, clearly challenge the two veterans, and the result is in an old-fashioned hard bop slug-a-thon with no gliding through the solos.

      When the music reaches moments of sublimity as such you can usually catch Frank and Marcia Whitman, the owners of the Silvermine Tavern, standing opposite of the bandstand—next to the swinging doors (no pun intended) leading into the kitchen—and enjoying the groove. It’s probably the best vantage in the whole joint to see and hear the musicians at work, but they’re the kind of generous souls who’d readily set another table at their spot for some latecomers if there was really room to do so.

     Despite the abundance of concert halls, theaters, performances spaces, entertainment centers, auditoriums, bars and restaurants in the area that feature ‘live’ music on a regular basis, it’s perfectly ironic and somewhat apropos that the only venue where you can find le jazz hot, guaranteed, each week is at a rustic country inn redolent of New England charm and comfort. In many ways, the Silvermine Tavern will remind serious jazz fans afflicted with wanderlust of the Delaware Water Gap’s Deer Head Inn, another seemingly incongruous venue for the Improviser’s Art, whose owners are similarly committed to presenting top-notch talents to a discerning clientele.

     “We love the music and the people who come here to play,” said Frank Whitman matter-of-factly. “While we work hard to provide food, drink and lodging to our customers, music is just as important here—and lots of fun, too.”

     The local historical society has adjudged the Silvermine Tavern to be the site originally of Cocker’s Cotton Factory back in 1810, although the Old Mill on the property was probably built earlier, said Mr. Whitman. The other three edifices extant today—Coach House, former Gatehouse (now part of the main building) and Country Store—were built in the mid-1880s. The area, along with the small river that meanders between the hills north of Norwalk, is said to have received the “Silvermine” moniker in the late 1700s when the early settlers dug around some in search for a quick fortune. Prosperity did come to the area, however, via a wood turning and peg making operation in the Old Mill, and in the early-1900s a group of neighboring artists led by the sculptor Solon Borglum created the Silvermine Guild, an arts colony that helped usher in Modernism.

     The Silvermine Tavern was known at the time as the Old Red Mill and it served as the meeting place for the artists in the area. After Prohibition the property was bought by the lawyer and antiquarian J. Kenneth Byard, who began to lodge overnight guests in the upstairs rooms and later remodeled a succession of porches into dining rooms. Today, besides offering the public a fine luncheon and dinner menu, there are eleven quaintly decorated rooms and, in the Coach House, a “Mill Pond Suite” available for wayfarers, with accommodations costing between $85 and $195 a night depending on the room.

     The innkeeping business is a demanding one, and this correspondent speaks from experience, as his parents once owned and operated the Hartness House, a 43-room country inn located in Springfield, VT, and for a while he served as lounge manager and breakfast chef there. (A younger brother later managed the inn for several years as well.) Ray Jones, a retired jazz pianist who’d once played in Paul Whiteman’s jazz orchestra (or so he said), entertained nightly on the upright in the lounge, and I recall the parents/innkeepers once remarking that the best and worst part of the job was that it seemed like they were throwing a party every night of the year.

     The Whitmans smiled and voiced their agreement when this observation about innkeeping was related to them. We were talking in the lounge of the Silvermine Tavern one recent Saturday afternoon, trading both war stories and heartwarmers about the hospitality business, plus sharing news about mutual friends in the jazz world, when suddenly the genial couple—Frank, the laconic one, and the more extroverted Marcia—revealed a significant personal detail about the lives, a “Rosebud”-type piece of information that tied many of the aspects of this story together. To wit (pun intended): in 1966, while in high school, they both played in a rock band called Four Hits and a Miss, with Frank drumming, and Marcia (nee Witham) singing and playing keyboards. “Mostly we rehearsed,” Ms. Whitman admitted.

     And these propitious musical gatherings actually took place in the basement of the couple’s present home adjacent to the Silvermine Tavern property, which is where Mr. Whitman grew up. Originally from Grove City in western Pennsylvania, where Frank Sr. managed the Penn-Grove Hotel, young Frank was just 4 when the family overnighted at the Silvermine while en route to Boston one summer. “I remember we stayed in a little cottage that’s now the Mill Pond Suite,” said Mr. Whitman. The charm and allure of the place caught his mother and father’s fancy, and in the fall of 1955 they purchased the property from Mr. Byard.

     Needless to say, Frank Whitman helped his parents after school and during the summers at the Tavern; like his father, he graduated from Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, all the while dating his former bandmate, who was getting her degree at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford. They were married in 1972 (their wedding reception was at the Tavern, just as their daughter Charlotte’s will be this August), and the following year Mr. Whitman was onboard at the family business full-time.

     Frank and Marcia Whitman bought the Silvermine Tavern outright from his parents in 1990—Frank Sr. passed away in 1996—and while much of the ambiance of the landmark inn in terms of structure and décor has remained the same through the decades, their personalized “stamp” on the place can best be seen in the “Inn Late Jazz” concept.

     The endeavor to build an audience for jazz at the Tavern began in November 1993 and was at first only a Friday night adventure. “It took a long time for the music to take hold here,” said Ms. Whitman. “In order to make it go we emphasized that guests should come for dinner and stay for the music.” By building up a mailing list and tweaking the schedule, the Whitmans eventually put themselves on the map as a viable night time destination for jazz, much to the delight of area’s jazz artists who’d long suffered a paucity of local gigs.  Interestingly, the absence of a long bar and over-sized lounge area prevents the tavern from becoming a single’s bar scene, “but we don’t want a ‘concert hall hush’ during the music either,” said Mr. Whitman.

     Thursday nights are devoted to Dixieland bands, more often than not the much-loved Bearcats; on other nights, however, the menu is straight-ahead jazz with the music usually lasting until about 11: 30 p.m., “although anyone with a lively crowd is welcome to play longer,” said Ms. Whitman. As a full-time music teacher at New Canaan Country School, she usually makes it through the first set. Being a big jazz fan, like her husband, often means staying around as some of the notables who have performed at the Tavern—such as silky saxophonist Houston Person, the late, great Jimmy Hill, bass virtuosos Harvie S and John Patitucci, veteran guitarist Joe Beck and flutist Aly Ryerson—finish up near midnight. Even the chef, Matt Stein, whose father was a musician, has been known to stick around after the kitchen is closed.

     “Playing at the Silvermine is not just another gig,” said Ms. DiCamillo recently, “it’s a place that always feels right and makes me happy. Frank and Marcia both have an ear for excellence, and they’re committed to presenting a high level of musicianship for their customers. As a result, they’re well-known around here and in the New York jazz circles for having a quality venue, a real ‘listening room.’ Instead of spotlighting, say, just Connecticut players, Frank and Marcia simply want to spotlight talent. I’ve seen a lot of club owners and venues come and ago in the 27 years that I’ve been leading my trio, and the Silvermine Tavern is a beacon for both jazz musicians and fans for good reason.”