From Junkyard to Jazz Room
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Others on the jazz scene are watching the project with considerable interest. “This is the first time in a while that someone who really knows the business side of the business has opened a jazz club in Chicago,” says Jazz Institute of Chicago executive director David Sack, adding that the jazz business is in a state of flux in Chicago. Joe Segal’s Jazz Showcase in the Blackstone Hotel is looking for a new home now that the hotel’s been sold. HotHouse, a popular site for alternative jazz, lost its lease in the Flat Iron Building last month, and owner Marguerite Horberg is presenting shows at the Firehouse, 1625 N. Damen, while she looks for a permanent home. The Jazz Buffet, one of the first clubs to try mixing food and music, hasn’t drawn the huge crowds it initially expected and is broadening its programming to include more than jazz. However, jazz is a growing presence in hotel lounges such as the Metropole Lounge at the Fairmont, and clubs like the Bop Shop still offer it nightly. Bop Shop owner Kate Smith says, “We’re moving out of that pretentious, elitist jazz era, where everyone had to sit quietly and listen, and getting back to a period of full audience participation.”
But Eychaner and Weiss have an ally in the state attorney’s office and haven’t given up. They and some other ATC members are concerned that, because the council functioned as a public charitable trust, they could be held liable if Roosevelt were to misappropriate funds contributed to the Auditorium. Late last week attorneys for Eychaner and Weiss and assistant attorney general Floyd Perkins filed separate motions asking the court to reconsider its July decision. Jaffe will hear their arguments on August 22.
Adams and director Blake Edwards are also concerned about the finale of act one, “Crazy World,” a rather somber ballad sung by Andrews. “At this point we’re playing with a lot of things,” says Adams, who adds that it’s difficult to make changes when the company is doing eight performances a week and union rules only allow two four-hour rehearsals a week. Victor/Victoria’s advance ticket sales in New York currently exceed $10 million, a respectable figure but still far from the $30-million-plus advance sales achieved by shows such as Miss Saigon and Sunset Boulevard.
