User:Gfusco/Keystone Korner

The Keystone Korner, one of the most important and longest-lasting jazz clubs in San Francisco, opened in 1973.

Todd Barkan Conversation
by Conrad Silvert (Published May, 1977, Berkeley Jazz '77 Magazine) For the past five years, Todd Barkan has been a leading force in the Bay Area jazz scene, providing a forum -- his Keystone Korner club in San Francisco's North Beach -- for a great many of the world's most masterful practitioners of the great American art form, jazz, or as he called it, Black Classical Music. Barkan has showcased many resident Bat Area musicians over the years, but his main focus has been on the giants and musical innovators of jazz, many of whom have travelled to Keystone from New York City, or, in the case of players like Dexter Gordon, from overseas. A partial list of those who have played Keystone: Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, George Benson, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Grover Washington, Jr., Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, the Chicago Art Ensemble, Betty Carter, Stan Getz, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Charles Mingus, Horace Silver, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Max Roach, Joe Henderson, Jackie McLean, Bobby Hutcherson, Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Hubert Laws, and many, many others. The following are excerpts from a recent conversation with Barkan (who just returned from a six-week tour of Europe with Bobby Hutcherson, whom he manages) -- these words reveal some of Barkan's philosophical tenets regarding the art and the business of music: "When you're booking jazz, at a festival or at a club, there has to be concern with excellence, not just what sells records. It's an inevitable result of the cross-pollination of the music to have illegitimate offspring, children of commerce. But how much money do you have to make?  How many cars can you buy?  How much can you eat?  Do you have to play down to your audience?  Can't you lift the audience up without condescending?  Because I feel there is some condescension going on with certain musicians today, great musicians who have so much more to offer than what they're giving today... I do respect people like Betty Carter and McCoy Tyner and Rahsaan and Elvin Jones, and their audiences are gradually expanding. "So much of the jazz-rock thing is tiring, but Miles Davis can play his music better than any of his imitators, with more surprises -- he maintains his integrity. Joe Zawinul of Weather Report is a genius and deserves more credit. But the saddest thing out there today is that there is more homogeneity than ever, all those electric pianos sounding just the same. "And the sameness is geographical, too -- you can't go to Chicago anymore and hear the Chicago sound, or to Cleveland -- everybody's playing the same shit. There are more cats playing now, but you just don't hear them on the radio or at large nightclubs.  You might hear them once in a while, ans some of it is healthy, when good players like Chick Corea and Miles and Zawinul reach larger audiences.  But there's a wholesale lack of imagination on the part of record companies -- the producers -- too much concern with what has already sold, rather than having faith in what you are doing.  There's too much bandwagoning, because recording and marketing albums is so expensive that people go for the sure thing. "With Keystone, I want to inject the most important Black Classical musicians into the cultural life of the community. And taking a few chances is part of the business. Hardly anybody makes money off jazz tours except the hotels and airlines and restaurants. The San Francisco Symphony is underwritten because it represents European classical music, but Keystone Korner is not because it presents Black Classical music. It's a mini-miracle that Keystone is open, and I think it's time for things to change."