The
Saugerties Sunday Jazz Session
By Peter Aaron
...reinvented
in such a consistent setting is at an all-time low. So in addition
to being a local institution and featuring great music, the free
session is a member of an all too endangered species. To see it
thriving like this is enough to make a jazz lover do the Lindy Hop
in the middle of Main Street.
But
until just recently the session’s future was bleak and very
uncertain. The Pig’s former incarnation, the Chow Hound, which
had been the session’s home since day one, closed last summer
when mammoth rent and operating increases forced the owners out
of business and put the music out in the cold. “I tried to
find somewhere else to do it, tried some nights at a few other places,”
says Pentony, who also teaches music at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson
and has an extensive background in New York and London theater.
“But nothing was the right fit. The vibe is all-important,
and those other places just didn’t have it.” It looked
like the Sunday sessions were through.
Enter
former Manhattan restaurateur Ed Novak, who took over the empty
eatery in the fall and reopened it under its new name in late June.
Since Pentony also lives in town, it wasn’t long before she
stopped back in to the remodeled space and approached Novak about
resurrecting the session. “We didn’t really have any
steady music going on, so I decided to give it a try,” says
Novak. “I’d never really been a jazz fan myself, but
it turned out that I really like the stuff Pamela and the other
musicians play. Lots of great, older standards— it’s
really good music.”
So
in a case of true and very welcome irony, as of June 28 the once
dispossessed session is now safely back in its Partition Street
crucible, which is open from noon to midnight every day and offers
a wide range of beer, wine, and other beverages....
CONTINUE...
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