Queues and packed to see off a jazz club. Who was to say! The Milano Jazz Club in the Ronda Universitat de Barcelona was full as an egg on Thursday night, a date marked by a real estate contract to liquidate three years of live music in the center of the Catalan capital. The fans noticed with surprise the presence of cameras that had never set foot in the cocktail bar. Send the news. The occasion, to cover "a New Orleans funeral", as one of the faithful in the room lucidly dubbed it.
In fact, there was no requiem. Yakety Yak!, the band with saxophonist Dani Nel·lo as its best-known face, made it so, thanks to an energetic rhythm
Chance wanted this danceable style to be the one that closed the venue. The handover of the keys doomed some later concerts originally scheduled. While Hugo Zambrana, barman and room manager, tried to manage the chaos - although purely anecdotal, there was a moment of tension due to the agglomeration -, the band continued with the demonic rhythms and some scathing message. "It's not elegant to insult the public, but to have to close the place because it's full, it's already bastards!" crooner Agustí Burriel shouted with his voice.
But the biggest applause of the night was, of course, won by the Milano squad. The party ended with the entire audience standing, euphoric: those who were already standing because they couldn't sit down and those who were more comfortable, swept along by the frenetic rhythm. The encore was not in the plans, but it marked the evening perfectly.
So, a 16-year project is coming to an end. A project by the brothers Sergi and Ramon Larrégola that started as an elegant cocktail bar with a vintage-inspired English decor that it has maintained until now. Very soon it hosted live music in a stable way – 365 days a year until the pandemic – to gradually climb in prestige and patronize high-level musicians both at home and abroad. Chano Domínguez, Ben Sidran, Peter Berstein and Scott Hamilton have passed through here, names that may not ring a bell to most, but which have placed Barcelona – following the line of the famous Jamboree – on the international jazz map. And she also sang there, for example, a certain Rosalía at its beginnings. Because the rooms are also schools for talent.
The pandemic gave a first blow, but the place was already recovering. And things ended up going awry when an offer from a chain of trattorias arrived that was 30% higher than the rental price and put an end to all hope of keeping the flame of music alive. The works start in the autumn: they won the franchise spaghetti.
And the future? Caution, but hope. The programmers Guim Cifré and Clara Conill, yesterday visibly excited but exhausted by it all, celebrated that there are ways to recover the club in another location, either with the name of Milano - there is some private project interested in not losing the brand - or in other emblematic spaces closed today. For this reason, Cifré also expects a gesture from the City Council, which last week guaranteed measures to help live music.
On the table is also the possibility that the tandem will submit to a public competition to manage a large municipal hall, but the idea has not yet convinced them. Cifré has to keep the spirit and the cultural level that Milano has achieved in the last three years that he has been at the head of the program. And the wish: that yesterday's goodbye, joyful in spite of everything, be rather a see you soon.
