Here’s to New York’s Village Vanguard, the temple of jazz: not a museum but a living, breathing space for amazing miracles of music. And most of the greats have played there. Here’s my take on the club after going down recently to catch the JD Hall Trio. That’s Gregg August on bass and the otherworldly Tyshawn Sorey on drums. I took photos and did sketches, though it was too dark for either. For once I relied mostly on the sketchbook. In the final, the right wall has Coltrane, Monk and Miles, and not the famous tuba that Max Gordon and his daughter Deborah bought at an auction long ago—a David Remnick edit. My thanks to him for loving jazz and going with this project for this week’s New Yorker, and Lorraine Gordon, still takin’ no prisoners at 87. Coltrane’s “Impressions” included here, from a famous album recorded—guess where. Another 175, VV.
