Smalls

On a dripping whet New York night, the nondescript entrance to Smalls club in Greenwich Village looks thoroughly unprepossessing.

Inside, however, the room has an atmosphere unlike any other in New York. There are no waitresses, no alcohol on sale, just a quietly seated audience squeezed into the space. It comes as a surprise to see some of them, no older than high-school kids, sitting behind the bar, where a few jugs of water and juice are available on a serve-yourself basis.

Although it bills itself as "New York's Cutting Edge Jazz Club", the music at Smalls is not free-form or avant-garde. In keeping with it's name, derived from Harlem's now defunct Smalls' Paradise, the new club is linked directly into the jazz tradition. Old-timers like drummers Eddie Locke or Jimmy Lovelace who played at that original club now rub shoulders with Young Turks on the Smalls band stand.

The club itself and it's encouragement of a generation of young players steeped in Jazz tradition but exploring new territory, are the brainchild of the owner Mitch Borden. A spiky angular man, who sits with his large white dog, reading poetry between collecting the $10 admission charges, Borden is the club's only employee. He guards the door for each set from 10pm until 10am, and also for the subsequent all-nigh jam session. An ex-nurse, he says he is used to being up through the night, but he combines his management tasks with a clarity of vision that has built the club's reputation among musicians and listeners alike.