Victor Dvoskin at the Tabard Inn

by Alan Greenblatt

The best standing gig I've been to lately is at Tabard Inn, where bassist Victor Dvoskin for several years has been playing in the lounge on Sunday evenings, accompanied by a rotating cast of local guitar players. If you've been in that room, you can imagine how cozy a setting it provides, with the long couches, dark woods and fireplace. What's striking is that the two or three dozen people sitting there seem intent on listening, rather than competing with the music through conversation. Dvoskin and his guitarist on a recent Sunday, whose name already escapes me, were playing real jazz, which is to say that they were throwing ideas off one another and seeking to explore new ground.

That's unusual in these restaurant/bar/hotel gigs, where the audience typically pays no real attention and it becomes a paid practice time exercise for the musicians. Such seemed to be the case the other night at Kramerbooks. Now, if you've been there, you know it's an odd set up for music, with the players standing or sitting on a small terrace hanging over the bookstore, barely visible and not audible from the perspective of most of the diners. It's one of those situations where you feel like you're disturbing the silence if you applaud.

The guy playing the other night was on solo electronic keyboards, noodling through some bluesy stuff with a strong, repetitive left hand cranking out the rhythms. It got interesting when he played some pop tunes, lending them a new sound. It was odd to hear "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" played as if in a 1930 barrelhouse piano bar, but it was something different and certainly a lot better than the soulless Joan Baez version.

Those are both Dupont spots but in Adams Morgan you can wander down the street and cock your ear at the door of usually about four places a night that are hosting live music. I didn't bother to go into the Ghana Cafe a week or so ago but enjoyed leaning against a parking meter and hearing a four-piece band playing West African music that sounded like it was being reinvented by a group of reggae players. It was totally repetitive, so I didn't feel like I had to stick around for more than a couple of songs, but it was pleasant stuff to hear at the end of a late-night errand.

I did sit through a set with a friend at Felix, which is a bar that seems a little past its time. The decor is much more spare than it was three or four years ago, when it was often hard to push your way up the bar. It was dead the night we went, admittedly during the week, and there seemed to be some house rule that DVDs of "Sex and the City" must be played constantly. Reliving the time of their greatest success, I'd say. Felix still brings in some nice local combos several nights a week and the night we were there belonged to a four-piece Latin band. Again, the music was repetitive and the players, having only a handful of auditors, didn't bother breaking up the rhythms in any thoughtful sort of way.