The Napa Valley Opera House will have a new tenant come February 1st, 2016. Blue Note Napa Valley will be the latest site for the famed New York jazz club.
The Opera House has been home to City Winery, another New York fixture, for the last two years. City Winery never caught on here especially trying to fill the 350 seat venue and the restaurant has been a bit of a flop especially to locals.
City Winery came in and did a substantial remodel to the Opera House which was opened here in approximately 1880 and was reputed to be one of two such structures of its type still standing West of the Mississippi. The current Board took on a huge restoration project in 2003 and failed in their attempt to be successful. Here is its history from the Opera House’s web site.
The plan is to create a Blue Note intimate jazz club on the ground floor of the historic Opera House, while returning the upstairs Theater to a diverse program which will include theater, musical theater, comedy, film, concerts and community events.
Besides the New York club which opened in 1981, Blue Note has others in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya in Japan and Milan, Italy. There is one opening in Honolulu, Hawaii in 2016.
Something I found out from George Altamura, owner of the Uptown Theatre here, it is often difficult to book performers for a single gig. Thus unless they are on i.e. a West Coast swing, they won’t come to play one night. A situation which will be drastically different for Blue Note. From the Napa Valley Register article sited below; “With plans to open three jazz clubs in Beijing in 2016, Bensusan said a Napa location would allow them to “route our talent” through a West Coast stop on the way from New York to Hawaii and Asia.”
Stay tuned for it will be very interested to see how all this plays out. I do wish them the best. To read a more complete story about the upcoming Blue Note Napa Valley by Sasha Paulsen, Opera House welcomes outpost of famed New York jazz club
Who will do the booking of talent for the Blue Note in Napa CA.?