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Sure Thing

By GREG BURK
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
“ The best live music goes completely unnoticed,” says Rocco Somazzi about L.A. Sure, there are plenty of good sounds here that exist for worthy purposes of relaxation, meditation, hormonal agitation or release of aggression, but the Swiss-Italian clubman is talking about music-music, the evolutionary expressions fueled by originality, skill and intellectual daring. You could call much of it jazz, but, y'know, whatever .

To bring notice to the unnoticed (and to provide himself some listening fodder), in 1998 the eternally cheerful Somazzi started Rocco, his first club/bistro, in Bel Air , no less, aided with booking by friend Matt Piper. Inexperienced as a restaurateur, he got slaughtered by the realities of business and overhead, shutting down in 2000. He veered opposite with his next effort, moving Rocco in 2001 to a theater on a nasty Hollywood stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard to which few dared venture. He and Piper kept that chugging for a couple of years, but recently he's found what looks like the perfect balance, presenting shows in downtown's up-and-coming loft district at a clean, open and inviting little café (with carefully selected wine, beer and food) called Metropol.

Somazzi's offerings in his clubs and now in occasional concerts at Barnsdall Theater have frequently been amazing: Cedar Walton with Billy Higgins, Steve Coleman, Avishai Cohen, Freddie Redd, James Carney, Vinny Golia — even completely out-there stuff such as the hyperkinetic Mexican marimba duo Micro-Ritmia. If it tweaks his ear, he'll give it a shot.

Considering all the beatings and beatitudes Somazzi has experienced since moving to the USA in 1992, you'd have to consider his stance philosophical. It should be; he majored in philosophy.

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Los Angeles Magazine (best of LA issue, Au]g 2005)

The best jazz club in L.A. is wherever ROCCO SOMAZZI handles the booking on a given night. Live jazz starts with the unpredictable alchemy of an audience willing to take on the unexpected in a charged room-and then the music starts. That's where Somazzi comes in. The 33-year-old takes risks, cares passionately about the performances, and puts good food out, too. He's booked established stars such as Alan Pasqua and Kenny Barron, third-world experimentalists, and CalArts noice. He is the rare local booker who keeps jazz fans wondering what he's going to do next. Somazzi follows his muse to a fault, which is probably why he's singing God bless the child who's got his own. Since he closed his way-ambitious Bel-Air restaurant-club Rocco's in 2000, however, he hasn't hunkered down, hasn't sold out-he's diversified. Right now Somazzi handles the jazz at Café Metropol, a yummy brick-walled room in an industrial part of downtown. He also organizes shows in the Gallery Theater at Barnsdall Art Park. In a funny twist of fate, Herp Albert has opened the club Vibrato Grill Jazz…etc. on the Beverly Glen side of Somazzi's old joint. The place has been getting a lot of attention but still is finding its footing. Here's what the Grill needs: Somazzi booking the acts.

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Off the radar but still flying (LATimes June 9, 2005)

By Lynell George, Times Staff Writer

Impresario Rocco Somazzi is wearing yet another hat — or rather, at the moment, another apron. He sails out of the kitchen of Cafe Metropol, deep in the industrial section of downtown L.A., with three plates — two endive salads and a cheese plate — for a table of women who look as if they're just coming off work. He pivots toward another table and pulls out a pad. A mother and daughter, who looks to be about 7, gaze up at him: "You guys want some pizza? It's very, very good."
The music is just starting up; the Kathleen Grace Band begins working through its first set: "My Ship," "La Mer," "Sunrise, Sunset." The energy of the room — the music competing with dinner conversation and the unpredictable rhythms of a Friday evening — is a night-and-day situation for Somazzi, who for a couple of years ran one of the more adventurous destination jazz spots in the city, one that was as quiet as a temple.
For those hard-cores on the scene, Somazzi's name was (and is) synonymous with creative, assertive jazz. In 1998, he opened a room, Rocco's, high on a hill in Bel-Air and started booking some of the most adventurous acts he could lure.
"I was after music that was interactive. Music that was bold and not complacent. Something that was pure energy." Word of mouth brought him audiences and, some nights, a line outside.
Somazzi couldn't quite manage the overhead, and finally bailed. Soon after, he started booking shows at a theater on Santa Monica Boulevard's theater row — late-night sets, favored by musicians, that began after 10, after the theater crowd had cleared out.
After a disastrous booking with the famously unpredictable trumpeter Freddie Hubbard — "There were about 50 people, not 300" — Somazzi had to sell not just his car but his baby grand piano. He shuttered the business and took a step back to reconsider. In the last couple of months, he's been booking shows out of Barnsdall Park at the Gallery Theater and now at Cafe Metropol on 3rd Street (where he's the night manager). "Little by little I began to see the potential in the room."
Lighting the space and arranging the room is simple: "The single most difficult thing? Connecting the right audience with that atmosphere."
People from the neighborhood and friends of the band wander in, but the din has quieted some as the 10 o'clock hour advances. Since people live close by, instead of gearing up for a 10 or 11 p.m. start, Somazzi has to focus on winding down by midnight. "So it's always something."
In an odd twist of fate, Rocco's Bel-Air experiment has become Herb Alpert's pet project, Vibrato. And if Rocco's room became a citadel for serious jazz, in its current incarnation the music takes a back seat to after-work cocktails, expansive dinner chatter and an impressive date destination — with tasty steaks, chops and fish to boot. This doesn't mean that the music isn't sublime. It is. (Bobby Hutcherson and Toots Thielemans have played there; Dave Brubeck is scheduled.) It just has to compete with so much else. And for anyone who loves jazz, it's painful.

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LAWeekly Jazz Pick of the Week February 21-27, 2003


Released from the posh confines of its former Bel Air home, Rocco Somazzi’s namesake club has increasingly served a unique and desperately needed function in L.A. – a later-night hang where musicians, some young, some established, some internationally revered, can search unapologetically for difficult answers outside jazz’s mainstream. It’s without a doubt the most adventurous space in town – no one else consistently does the kind of nervy booking to which Somazzi is devoted – and the number of groundbreaking musicians found in the audience on any given night is testament to the club’s vitality as a nexus for new ideas. If you haven’t made your pilgrimage yet, this week’s three-night lineup gives you nothing but good excuses to do so – it’s particularly exemplary of the wide range of Somazzi’s vision, and there isn’t a bum choice in the bunch.

– Brandt Reiter

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Stellar space (LAWeekly, best of LA 2002)


What started off as a rough year for L.A. jazz , the Jazz Spot closed, Billy Higgins died, Kenny G didn't , looks to end on a high note now that Rocco has defibrillated itself back to life. Eponymous co-owner Rocco Somazzi and musical director Matt Piper (both in their late 20s) displayed true cojones for plopping the first incarnation of their post-bop and experimental music showcase right in Bel-Air's cushy Beverly Glen Circle , especially since the iconoclasts who graced its cozy stage (Peter Erskine, Charles Lloyd, Bobby Bradford and ex-Mother Don Preston, to name a few) were more likely to send the well-heeled Westside clientele running back to its Diana Krall CDs. After a seven-month hiatus, Rocco Mach 2 has debuted as a refreshingly minimalist affair, sans the Tuscan cuisine, 100-item wine list or napkin rings (or napkins at all, for that matter). Located in a bombed-out section of Hollywood in a space that used to be an appliance store, the new Rocco feels more like the back room of a Socialist meeting hall: blood-red brothel drapes, spare brick, schloss-like woodwork, postmodern color collages by artist Milo Reice. It doubles as the Whose Cafe from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and as a theater space from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.; not long ago, L. Stinkbug , another of Nels Cline and G.E. Stinson's gang of avant-assassins , bashed out a set of gorgeous noize and cosmic slop surrounded by a prop fishing boat and chandelier that hadn't yet been removed. Shows aren't introduced: Like a Cassavettes film or Vanya on 42nd Street, they just kind of "happen" when a handful of people who've been sitting and talking quietly in the audience get up, amble nonchalantly toward the stage and start to play. They may include , on any given night and in any given combination, a mouthwatering array of talent: James Carney, Theo Saunders, Alan Pasqua, Bill Cunliffe, Cedar Walton or Andy Milne on piano; Sal Marquez on trumpet, Scott Ray on trombone or Vinny Golia on woodwinds; Mark Ferber or Alex Cline on percussion; Tony Dumas or Todd Sickafoose on bass; Nels Cline, Derek Bailey, Adam Levy or Justin Morell on guitar; and Chuck Manning, Arthur Blythe, Kim Richmond or Stacey Rowles on saxophone. Before you know it, it's 4 a.m., they're still going strong , and not a soul is thinking of leaving.

- Matt Deuersten