Jersey jazz fest opener celebrates the spirit of legendary Keystone Korner

Answering the phone one recent morning, Todd Barkan chirped out a lilting, "Lee Morgan!"

The greeting, he explained, was "a combination of bebop and German." It was also customized for a caller from Philadelphia, hometown of the great trumpet player. More than that, though, it was a prime indicator of how Barkan thinks in the language of jazz.

From 1972 to 1983, Barkan got to tout his love for the music every night from the stage of the Keystone Korner, the nightclub he owned and ran in San Francisco. During its decadelong existence, countless jazz titans played the Keystone - towering names such as Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, and Dexter Gordon. Pianist Mary Lou Williams called the club "the Birdland of the '70s."

Barkan recalls that "what distinguished the Keystone Korner was a certain kind of humanism. There was a real feeling that that club was a home away from home for a lot of artists of a lot of different persuasions."

Barkan has enjoyed a long and distinguished career apart from the Keystone, producing hundreds of recordings, including pianist/bandleader Arturo O'Farrill's Grammy-winning 2014 album, The Offense of the Drum, and serving as artistic administrator of Jazz at Lincoln Center for more than 10 years. But he still looks back fondly at the Keystone Korner as a special hub during a memorable era.

He's tried to resurrect the spirit of the club on a few occasions, including a "Keystone Korner Concert Series" at the New York club Iridium in 2013. On Thursday, he'll open the Cape Bank Jazz @ The Point Festival in Somers Point, N.J., with a tribute celebration featuring pianist George Cables' trio, with drummer Victor Lewis and bassist Essiet Essiet and special guests trumpeter Eddie Henderson and vibraphonist Steve Nelson.

Barkan calls Cables, who will also perform at the festival as a member of the hard-bop supergroup the Cookers, "the closest thing we had to a house pianist at Keystone Korner." Then based in Los Angeles, Cables played the club frequently alongside the likes of Dexter Gordon, Bobby Hutcherson, Freddie Hubbard, and Art Pepper, among others.

"Whenever I went there, I felt very much at home," Cables says of the Keystone. "It seems like listening to music there was more fun than almost anywhere. People were actually there to listen to music; they didn't go there to be seen or just to have a good time or go out to dinner. So being there was quite an experience for everyone involved."

The Keystone also holds a special place in Cables' heart because it was there that he met Helen Wray, who became his partner for 28 years until her death in 2009.

"Helen's Song," his oft-requested tribute to Wray, will doubtless be on Thursday night's program, along with music written by many of the club's regulars, including Hutcherson, Hubbard, and Gordon. "We want to celebrate that time and those moments," he says. "You can't really recreate that time, but you certainly can feel it through the spirit of what was happening and the commitment to the kind of music that was there."

For Barkan, it's the "warmth and community" of the Keystone that he seeks to evoke with his tribute concerts to the club. He compares the band that will perform on Thursday to a repertory theater troupe, with Steve Nelson standing in for Hutcherson, and Eddie Henderson, who was another club regular, playing the role not only of himself but of other Keystone trumpeters, such as Hubbard and Woody Shaw.

"We're really trying to channel the basic cultural streams and creative spirits that were so central to Keystone Korner," Barkan says."The spirit of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, the spirit of Freddie Hubbard, the spirit of Woody Shaw, the spirit of Bobby Hutcherson. That kind of warmth and spirituality in the music is what I try to bring to the music that I'm involved with in my little corner of the jazz universe."

Keystone Korner Tribute Celebration, 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Sandi Point Ballroom, 908 Shore Road, Somers Point, N.J. 609-927-6677, southjerseyjazz.org.