Flutterby™! : Gentemen of Jazz

Our friend Ross is a professional keyboard player. Charlene's heard him play, but until last night I only knew he was good because trying to coordinate schedules with him to get together is darned nigh impossible as he's always got a gig, and few of them are public events.

But he's got a regular appearance on Friday nights in Napa with the Philip Grady Smith & The Gentlemen of Jazz at Uva in Napa, and he's raved about the drummer for those sessions, one Dave Black, who played with Ellington back in '54.

So Charlene, Sarada and I drove across the top of the bay and up from Vallejo to find the restaurant packed, with the only tables far from the stage. So we hung out for a bit while the band set up and a table cleared out. It was a busy night, even though we were in the right room there was a table of 40 in between us and the band, and the place is somewhat loud.

Those issues aside, we were not disappointed. The band was quite good, we stayed through two sets, and with this line-up at ten 'til ten the band walks off stage and lets the drummer go wild for ten minutes or so. If you're not a musician or a percussion fan it might fall flat on you, lots of "wait, where's he going with that, it sounds so arhythmic", so if you go keep your own beat, and note that no matter how far he rambles from the rhythm and multiples of two, he's still nailing that beat. Which is why the musicians who play with him love to do so.

And Ross can really tickle the ivories. Despite the long trek each way we'll be going back.

The food was tasty, too. Simple fare cooked very well. I had ravioli with sage in butter, Charlene had lemon roast chicken, and Sarada had gnochi in a gorgonzola sauce that could easily have been too much, but wasn't. Desserts were equally tasty, a lemon liquer soaked lemon cake on thin slices of papaya, and a chocolate hazelnut concoction that the waitress warned us was "rich", but worked nicely for me.