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It's approaching 9 p.m. on a recent Wednesday at the Green Island Cafe, and Julian Berkowitz introduces the members of his trio. He's on drums and the others are on guitar and bass.

"There's a fourth member of the band, Phillip the Tip Jar, on bar stool," Berkowitz tells the handful of patrons. "Thanks for supporting live jazz."

The decades-old restaurant, on the ground floor of club Heaven and Hell in Adams Morgan, is easy to miss among the wealth of nightlife spots on 18th Street, save for a "LIVE JAZZ" neon light in the window. But it's the relatively new home of one of the city's longest-running jam sessions, continuing a legacy begun more than two decades ago at the now-shuttered longtime jazz venue Columbia Station next door.

The free jam session — hosted by pianist Peter Edelman four nights a week — moved to the Green Island in February 2020 after Columbia Station closed due to rent increases. A month later, the music stopped completely as the region shut down because of the pandemic. In a city that has made countless contributions to the genre, jazz venues had to close their doors, some for good. Now, amid a comparatively sluggish local jazz scene and the ongoing threat of COVID, the storied gatherings are fighting to regain even the modest loyal attendance they had before.

"Whatever momentum we had from Columbia Station was put on hold because of the lockdown," Edelman says. "When [places have] gradually been opening up, people maybe didn't get the word that Columbia Station relocated."

In the last month or so, Edelman says, attendance has been spotty. While the club may have a good night here and there, with a few dozen attendees, other evenings pull in single digits. Edelman says he's concerned about the waning attendance, and doing his best to promote the sessions via posters and social media.

"We're really hoping through word of mouth and this kind of effort we can increase the attendance," Edelman says.

Mehari Woldemariam — who owns the building housing the Green Island and Heaven and Hell, and who ran the now-defunct Columbia Station — says he has no plans to cancel jazz at the club.

"There's going to be jazz at Green Island as long as I live," Woldemariam says.

But the anemic attendance at the jam is still worrisome for Edelman and others. The pandemic dealt a serious blow to the live music industry, and live jazz particularly. Several legendary venues announced permanent closures, including U Street's Twins Jazz, and musicians struggled to cobble together revenue from livestream donations, virtual teaching, and unemployment checks.

That follows a tough stretch for the city's jazz institutions even prior to the health emergency, including the closure of staples like Bohemian Caverns, HR-57, Cafe Nema, Utopia, and State of the Union.

Mere months into the reopening of the venues that remain, jazz musicians such as Edelman are concerned about their future.

"In speaking with my colleagues around town, we're all in the same boat; nobody knows what's really going on and how stable our jobs are," Edelman says of the ongoing pandemic. "We're all somewhat anxious about the situation, and we're hoping for some clarity moving forward."

The jam session at Green Island is part of the city's legacy of live jazz; the session dates back more than 20 years, with roots in multiple clubs.

Woldemariam, who says "jazz is in my blood," hosted jazz at his now-closed Cafe Lautrec in the 1990s and brought the music to Columbia Station six nights a week later that decade, keeping the tradition going until Columbia Station closed last year.

(Woldemariam and his bars have also come before the city's Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration in recent years. In 2019, the board fined Heaven and Hell $90,000 and suspended the bar's liquor license after multiple violations, including an incident in which Woldemariam accidentally served a drink with a toxic cleaning fluid. He called the event "a mistake" at the time.)

At the behest of Edelman, Woldemariam hired pianist Lawrence Wheatley in those early days to run weekend jam sessions.

"Wheatley set a standard that it's frankly difficult to live up to," says Edelman. "He was a great composer and arranger. And he really ran the jam session more as a jazz workshop, where people would bring in new compositions."

Wheatley brought decades of experience to Columbia Station. Not long before he arrived at the Adams Morgan venue, he and Edelman were hosting jams at the One Step Down, a jazz venue on Pennsylvania Avenue near Georgetown. From the late 1970s through 2000, the club hosted an array of local and national jazz notables, including vocalist and D.C. native Shirley Horn and bassist Ray Brown.

"It was a real, what we would now call a dive bar; it was really kind of low-budget. But they had these wonderful little booths and this wonderful jazz jukebox," Edelman says. "They called it the One Step Down because when you walked into the club, you had to step down one step."

Wheatley's jam sessions at Columbia Station were modeled on what he'd created at the One Step Down and were "very well-received," Edelman says.

"He was very much admired and loved and followed by younger musicians, and some of the older ones too," Edelman says.

When Wheatley's health began to decline in the early 2000s, Edelman took over at Columbia Station. Over the years, the sessions that were nominally held on weekends were happening several nights a week, he says.

"We kind of evolved to make every night that I was there a jam session," Edelman says. "The musicians who couldn't come out just on Saturday and Sunday afternoon were maybe able to come out on a weeknight or a weekend night."

Jam sessions like this one provide a critical opportunity for jazz musicians to collaborate and really dig into music, says saxophonist John McDuffie, a veteran of sessions at Columbia Station and the Green Island. (McDuffie first met Edelman at a jam session at One Step Down.)

"It's kind of like no-holds barred; you're able to try out things and [embrace] the spirit of adventure," he says. "And the music is [the main event] — it's not like, 'Hello. We're background music for your cocktail conversation.' It's like, 'Hello, we're coming at ya.'"

Musicians who are pros or amateurs might pop by the Green Island on any given night, he says.

"Those sessions have been just really important for younger players and for old weekend warriors like me who aren't really professional musicians but [get the] chance to get out and stretch our wings a little bit," McDuffie says.

Yet an underwhelming number of musicians and patrons have spilled into the club since it re-opened in June, as COVID continues to pose safety risks and put musicians' livelihood on the line. Edelman occasionally sees a near-packed house of roughly 50 patrons, but audiences of 5 are also common.

On Wednesday night, the restaurant is near-empty. Strings of red, yellow, blue and green twinkle lights dangle above the bar. Melted votive candles lie dormant in fishbowls at well-worn booths. Drummer Julian Berkowitz and the rest of his trio are all wearing masks, a conspicuous reminder of the health crisis that kept them off the stage for months.

"COVID's making it tricky, obviously, but we're trying to keep the music alive," says Berkowitz, who stepped in for Edelman that night as jam session host. "I was really, really worried and sad about it for the beginning of the pandemic. But I'm kind of optimistic now."

Berkowitz notes that some D.C. jazz venues that had shuttered amid the pandemic are reopening, including Alice's Jazz and Cultural Society and Eighteenth Street Lounge. Meanwhile, other local spaces such as Simple Bar and Grill in Brightwood and Tonic at Quigley's in Foggy Bottom have launched or expanded their jazz fare in recent months. The current mix of fading and burgeoning venues seems to follow a decades-long trend in which one beloved club closes and another promising one opens.

"For me, at least, there's new opportunities that I never saw before," Berkowitz says. "We definitely need to make sure that we take care of all the venues that we have left. But I think jazz is still growing in the city."

Among the small group of audience members on Wednesday night are musicians making their maiden voyage to the club.

Christopher Smith stopped by to kick back. The afrobeat and reggae vocalist with Thievery Corporation, who performs as Puma Ptah, says he decided to pop in after hearing the music from the street.

"Even during a pandemic, I appreciate that there's live music to randomly walk into and enjoy," he says.

Jan Knutson grabs a chat with the guitarist between sets during the house band's break. The 2016 Strathmore Artist in Residence played at some Columbia Station sessions a few years ago, but was new to the Green Island.

"I like this place. I wish there were more people here, to a certain extent, [but] I'm glad people are being smart about dealing with this [pandemic]," he says.

Playing for small crowds can be "depressing," especially when it comes to a genre that is already underappreciated, he says. "Knowing that, I want to be able to do my part," Knutson says.

Moments later, he plugs his guitar into an amp and joins the band.

Green Island Cafe is located at 2327 18th St. NW. Peter Edelman hosts jam sessions on Wednesdays 8 p.m.-midnight, Fridays 8 p.m.-1:30 a.m., Saturdays 5 p.m.-1:30 a.m., Sundays 5 p.m.-1 a.m. No cover charge.

This story is from DCist.com, the local news website of WAMU.

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