St. Louis Jazz Cafe to open Saturday, March 21 with Erin Bode

Downtown St. Louis' newest jazz venue, the St. Louis Jazz Cafe, has set the date of its grand opening for Saturday, March 21, with singer Erin Bode as the featured entertainment. The club's opening night bash will include a "Happy Hour" from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., dinner service beginning at 5:00 p.m., and two sets of music from Bode and her band, exact times TBA.

The Cafe, which has been the subject of a couple of previous posts here at St. Louis Jazz Notes, also now has a Web site at http://stlouisjazzcafe.com. On the home page, you can see a small photo of the bar/restaurant's interior, which looks quite nice, but for the most part, the site still appears to be a work in progress. For example, while the menu page says that the club's fare "combines classic American standards with a French/Creole influence associated with New Orleans" and will "reflect the migration of of the food and the music, from New Orleans to Kansas City, to St. Louis to Memphis, to Chicago to New York," the link to the actual menu isn't working yet.

Similarly, the only musicians listed on the calendar page are Bode for the grand opening, and singer Donna Marie Moody on Saturday, March 28. The home page does say that the club will feature live music on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and at Sunday brunch, which will run from 10:00 a.m. to either 2:30 p.m. or 3:00 p.m., depending on which page of the site you're viewing.

(Presumably, little glitches like this, and the misspelling of the word "tradition" in the headline on the "entertainment" page, will get cleaned up in the near future as the site gets fleshed out. However - if I may put on my Internet media-critic hat here for a second - that still won't make up for the fact that the site's designers chose to build the whole thing in Flash, which makes it impossible to link to anything other than the home page. Apparently, it's not so good for search engine rankings either, as the site doesn't show up until the second page of results for a Google search on "St. Louis Jazz Cafe." Web designers, please note: Flash is great for animation, but not so good as a way to build entire sites.)

Anyway, based on the number of search engine hits StLJN gets on a weekly basis for variations on the phrase "Sunday jazz brunch," having music on Sundays could prove to be a good draw right out of the gate for the St. Louis Jazz Cafe. Also, there's no doubt that there's presently a void in the market for live jazz in St. Louis left by the closings of venues such as Finale Music and Dining, Cookie's Jazz and More, and Crossings Taverne and Grille over the last year or so. Here's hoping that the St. Louis Jazz Cafe's musical lineup will help fill some of that void, and when more information becomes available, we'll have it for you right here.

Jazz St. Louis revamps Web site, sets NYC trip itinerary

Jazz St. Louis has set the itinerary for its group jazz trip to New York City on April 18 and 19, 2008. The JSL group will visit jazz clubs Iridium, Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola (at Lincoln Center), the Jazz Standard and the Village Vanguard, and dine one evening at Blue Smoke, a restaurant owned by St. Louis native Danny Meyer. For more information about the trip, or to make a reservation, contact JSL development director Melissa Jones by calling 314-289-4037 or via email at melissa@jazzstl.org.

JSL has also revamped their Web site once again, giving the pages a slightly different look but maintaining the same basic structure adopted for the site's redesign earlier this year. Marketing director and Web guy Adam Roach has also added audio samples to the individual pages for artists coming to the Bistro. You can check out the new look and the audio samples here.

Jazz St. Louis launches educational Web site

Jazz St. Louis marketing director Adam Roach emailed with the news that JSL has just launched a new Web site focusing specifically on its jazz education programs. The new "Jazz U" site will include "forums for the students and educators, photo galleries for our different programs, blogs from the education staff, and places to find out more about our education programs," plus additional content as the site evolves.

See it for yourself by visiting http://jazzustl.org.

Jazz St. Louis' Web site gets a new look

Jazz St. Louis has unveiled a redesign of their Web site. In addition to the expected cosmetic makeover, site navigation seems improved (to this observer, anyway) and the organization's list of coming attractions is now prominently displayed on the home page. Marketing director Adam Roach, who manages JSL's online efforts, says he'll be adding more features and content soon.

It looks like the new design will allow the various JSL staff members to create their own on-site blogs, which could make for some interesting reading. (JSL's old Blogspot blog hasn't been updated since November 2006.) There's also a user registration feature, which allows registered users post to the site's message board.