Photos/Writer: Rudy Lu
The Van Dyck in Schenectady was a nationally known jazz club back in the 1950s and 60s. As Schenectady declined in the 70s and 80s, so did the fortunes of the Van Dyck. It was sold at a bankruptcy auction to Peter Olsen and some partners in 1997, who reintroduced live music to the venue. It was operating until 2007, when it was sold in another bankruptcy auction. The McDonald family (pioneer Schenectady entrepreneurs)owning and operating 3 restaurants, one with a small hotel bought the property and continued showcasing live music. This continued until 2019 when live music was discontinued. The restaurant then became a casualty of the pandemic. The present owner Chris Sule purchased the property in 2022. The 1st floor does business as Stella’s Pasta Bar and Seven Points Brewery. They have had live music on Saturday evenings primarily as background.
The 2nd floor initially continued closed. Recently live comedy was introduced. October 5 was the first time music was played upstairs.
To commemorate this occasion, this inaugural concert featured an all star nonet of 518 jazz musicians.
The audience was made up of many concert goers from the previous night’s Artemis concert in Schenectady as well as some newcomers. The jazz audience here in the 518 is very supportive of both local and national acts. They certainly were not disappointed.
Emceeing was longtime WCDB jazz DJ’ Bill McCann. WAMC DJ Tim Coakley provided nostalgic memories of the original Van Dyck. He was also straight man to McCann’s humor. The concert consisted of 2 sets:
1. The first showcasing individual musicians and their talents
2. The second structured as a jam session with the musicians all joining in on stage.
The rhythm section of Dave Gleason (piano), Michael Lawrence (bass) and Cliff Brucker (drums) played on both sessions.
The first soloist was Chad McLoughlin (guitar) performing in the style of Wes Montgomery in “Have you Met Miss Jones”, He stayed on for several numbers. Each number performed in the standard jazz format of melody, several solos throughout the song before going back to the melody.
The laid back stylings were quickly changed to a high speed train “Wabash” by alto saxophonist Keith Pray in the style of Cannonball Adderly.
The exotic Clifford Brown vehicle “Delilah” was covered by Chris Pasin (trumpet).
Vocalist Kaitlyn Fay sang “I Thought About You” and scatted freely following a Dave Gleason solo.
The more mellow side of jazz was explored by Lee Russo (tenor saxophone) with the 50’s “But Beautiful”.
Vibraphonist Michael Benedict delivered the vibes standard “Bags Groove”.
The set closed with the youngest member of the All Stars, Awan Rashad(tenor saxophone)conjuring up Sonny Rollins with a wild upbeat romp with phrasing from many tunes of “All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm”.
The second set consisted by of 2 songs that were essentially jams.
Duke Ellington/Juan Tizol’s mysterious “Caravan” was played with lots of solos and individual group expressions that continued for over 20 minutes
Duke’s swinging blues based “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be” closed out the set. For those in the 518, this is the intro and outro for Bill McCann’s Saturday AM radio show. Kaitlyn Fay joined in on vocals.
Benedict was directing the traffic of the solos and phrasing. This made the ebbs and flows easy to follow.
An impromptu encore followed with the standard “Autumn Leaves”, a mellow tribute by all to the season.
Kudos to Nathan Scheid, the sound engineer for this performance which had to be challenging.
There is a quibble about the stage lighting which could be improved upon. This will be especially more important for touring acts that may want lighting to accentuate their performance.
Great thanks to Chris Sule, the owner/manager of the establishment for bringing live music back to Schenectady and successfully hosting a full house.
The next musical event will be Brighton Beat. They play funk and afrobeat. Their 2018 Riverfront Jazz performance got the audience off their feet. Note that this event will be family friendly.’
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