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Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Can Blue Note become the new hot spot for L.A. jazz?
Danny Bensusan opened the Blue Note in Greenwich Village in 1981 and helped it quickly became home to some of the biggest names in jazz. Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson and Lionel Hampton are just some of the iconic acts who played there, and Chick Corea, Peterson, Keith Jarrett and James Carter recorded live records there. Now, 44 years later, Danny's son Steven is bringing the Blue Note to Hollywood. The venue, which has locations in Waikiki, Milan, Napa, Tokyo and more, will finally open its doors Thursday, with Blue Note staple and ambassador Robert Glasper doing two sets each Thursday and Friday. 'It's an important market for us,' Steven Bensusan tells The Times. 'A lot of the industry is based there. It's a major city and we want to establish ourselves there as the West Coast hub.' Like everything in L.A. this chaotic year, the club's journey has been tumultuous. Originally scheduled to open in late March, the Blue Note's premiere was delayed because of construction delays following the wildfires in January. 'We were very sensitive to the situation,' Bensusan says. 'We also didn't want to rush at that point, as well. So, it was delayed — construction delays, permitting delays, everything like that. But we didn't want to rush to get it open.' The original March 26 date was so locked in that the club's director of programming and talent buyer, Alex Kurland, had booked almost the whole year out from that date. So, when everything was pushed back by more than four months, Kurland had to rebook the entire schedule. 'It's a balance and it's a puzzle. It's a combination of rebooking, reorganizing when acts are available and what makes sense for acts, Kurland says. 'There isn't one situation or scenario that results from how everything unfolds. Some acts we definitely did lose for sure because they needed to play their market play or they just couldn't make it to the West Coast. Luckily, everyone was very understanding and accommodating.' The one thing they did know was that whenever the venue was ready for opening night, the headliner would be longtime Blue Note favorite Robert Glasper. 'We were not going to open the club without Glasper being the opening talent. We have a very deep relationship and alignment with him, and he wanted to open it,' Kurland says. 'It's a partnership and we're all in it together.' Glasper has become synonymous with Blue Note through his annual October residency in New York City, known as 'Robtober,' and curating the Blue Note Jazz Festival Napa at the end of August. While Glasper takes over the New York City location once a year, everyone involved is adamant that the Blue Note Los Angeles will very much reflect L.A. in every way and be a completely distinct entity. 'L.A. culture itself, the artists that are from L.A. and represent L.A. and the soul of L.A., but that's going to change the vibe of the Blue Note anyway, because we're definitely going to incorporate a lot of that,' Glasper, the cultural ambassador and a partner in the L.A. location, says. 'We want L.A. to feel like it's L.A.'s Blue Note, not like Blue Note New York moved to L.A. We're trying to give L.A. its own voice through the Blue Note.' According to Kurland, that plan is already in effect and will continue to very much be reflected in the booking. 'There are acts that are within the lineup that have not played at a Blue Note previously, and that's really important that we're engaging talent and artists that are having their debut moments within a Blue Note just because L.A. is going to be a very fresh and progressive approach to booking and programming,' he says. 'So not just booking acts that we have pre-existing history with but really focusing on talent that we are building new relationships with and talent that are having their initial new experiences in the Blue Note, maybe acts that you typically see playing in much bigger venues, acts like Charlie Puth, acts like Ben Folds.' A huge part of the Blue Note aesthetic is making unique moments through unique collaborations or unannounced guests, like Stevie Wonder or John Mayer jumping onstage after sitting in the audience. Both Glasper and Kurland are advocating heavily for and expect a lot of those moments with L.A. musicians. 'Collaboration is a huge goal every single day always from a programming standpoint and thinking about the booking more as moments rather than just the transaction of filling dates on the calendar,' Kurland says. 'Really being particular about how to maximize really special bookings that that are not just on tour and not just available, but that are curated and programmed.' Glasper has his dream jam. 'I would love for Stevie Wonder to come in there and just do music he wants to do that's not even his. Everybody gets to see Stevie do Stevie, but I know Stevie would love to just do music he appreciates including jazz music, he can go in there and just do a piano trio night. That's my number one in my mind. Number two is having Stevie join Herbie [Hancock] together.' Bensusan points out the L.A. menu will also differ, with many more vegan options than the New York location, and distinctly L.A. options such as Peruvian scallops and a crispy rice tuna taco. However, the greatest difference, Bensusan points out, is the L.A. location will be the first with two rooms, an A-room for the headliners, and a B-room for developing artists and surprise jams, podcasts, whatever. 'I'm also looking forward to really opening our first club with that second room that we're calling the B side, which we'll be able to experiment with and book younger artists that maybe can't draw in the bigger room and then help develop them so that they can, and giving them the exposure within our marketing and our advertising efforts and help give them more gigs,' Bensusan says. 'That room will serve multiple purposes. Yes, it will be an opportunity to put on and place developing acts that are not big enough necessarily to play the Blue Note, but that can grow to play the Blue Note, or acts that are engaging in underplays,' Kurland adds. 'Also thinking about programming that room next to the Blue Note, and maybe there's a holistic connection between the act playing in the Blue Note. For example, maybe Robert's playing in the Blue Note room, and Battlecat is DJing in the B side. We're thinking intentionally about how to elevate the vibe and elevate the curating. It's connected.' For Glasper, having the two rooms is key for his goal as cultural ambassador — making the Blue Note the spot in L.A. for musicians. 'L.A. is a big a— ocean of talent and legends. It just started lacking a place for everybody to let their creativity out. And I want Blue Note to be that place,' he says. 'I want to start a jam session for a certain night there. So, everybody knows nightly you can go here because they used to have that in L.A. You knew on Tuesday night, you can go to this place or Monday nights you go to that place for jamming, It's going to be an opportunity for so many people, to have a place to be and enjoy all the things.' As much as Bensusan, Glasper and Kurland agree on Blue Note L.A. being a multi-faceted facility, Bensusan's ultimate goal at the end of the day is no different than his dad's 44 years ago in New York. 'We want to create the mecca for jazz in L.A.,' he says proudly.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
NOAA firings, cuts will reduce services used to manage Alaska fisheries, officials say
Fishing boats are seen in Kodiak's St. Paul Harbor on Oct. 3, 2022. Deep job cuts at NOAA Fisheries will negatively affect the scientific work normally done to support fishery management, agency officials warned. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon) Trump administration job cuts in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will result in less scientific information that is needed to set and oversee Alaska seafood harvests, agency officials have warned fishery managers. Since January, the Alaska regional office of NOAA Fisheries, also called the National Marine Fisheries Service, has lost 28 employees, about a quarter of its workforce, said Jon Kurland, the agency's Alaska director. 'This, of course, reduces our capacity in a pretty dramatic fashion, including core fishery management functions such as regulatory analysis and development, fishery permitting and quota management, information technology, and operations to support sustainable fisheries,' Kurland told the North Pacific Fishery Management Council on Thursday. NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center, which has labs in Juneau's Auke Bay and Kodiak, among other sites, has lost 51 employees since January, affecting 6% to 30% of its operations, said director Robert Foy, the center's director. That was on top of some job losses and other 'resource limitations' prior to January, Foy said. 'It certainly puts us in a situation where it is clear that we must cancel some of our work,' he told the council. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council, meeting in Newport, Oregon, sets harvest levels and rules for commercial seafood harvests carried out in federal waters off Alaska. The council relies on scientific information from NOAA Fisheries and other government agencies. NOAA has been one of the targets of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has been led by billionaire Elon Musk. The DOGE program has summarily fired thousands of employees in various government agencies, in accordance with goals articulated in a preelection report from the conservative Heritage Foundation called Project 2025. NOAA's science-focused operations are criticized in Project 2025. NOAA Fisheries, the National Weather Service and other NOAA divisions 'form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity,' the Project 2025 report said. The DOGE-led firings and cuts leave Alaska with notably reduced NOAA Fisheries services, Kurland and Foy told council members. Among the services now compromised is the information technology system that tracks catches during harvest seasons — information used to manage quotas and allocations. 'We really have less than a skeleton crew at this point in our IT shop, so it's a pretty severe constraint,' Kurland said. Also compromised is the Alaska Fisheries Science Center's ability to analyze ages of fish, which spend varying amounts of years growing in the ocean. The ability to gather such demographic information, an important factor used by managers to set harvest levels that are sustainable into the future, is down 40%, Foy said. A lot of the center's salmon research is now on hold as well. For example, work at the Little Port Walter Research Station, the oldest year-round research station in Alaska, is now canceled, Foy said. 'We're talking about the importance of understanding what's happening with salmon in the marine environment and its interaction with ground fish stocks,' he said. Much of the work at Little Port Walter, located about 85 miles south of Juneau, has focused on Chinook salmon and the reasons for run declines, as well as the knowledge needed to carry out U.S.-Canada Pacific Salmon Treaty obligations. As difficult as the losses have been, Kurland and Foy said they are bracing for even more cuts and trying to figure out how to narrow their focus on the top priorities. Despite the challenges, Foy said, the Alaska Fisheries Science Center has managed to cobble together scheduled 2025 fish surveys in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska, which produce the stock information needed to set annual harvest limits. Some of the employees doing that work have been pulled out of other operations to fill in for experienced researchers who have been lost, and data analysis from the fish surveys will be slower, he warned. 'You can't lose 51 people and not have that impact,' he said. It was far from a given that the surveys would happen this year, Foy said. The science center team had to endure a lot of confusion leading up to now, he said. 'We've had staff sitting in airports on Saturdays, not knowing if the contract was done to start a survey on a Monday,' he said. At the same time the Trump administration is making deep cuts to science programs, it also is pushing fishery managers to increase total seafood harvests. President Donald Trump on April 17 issued an executive order called 'Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness' that seeks to overturn 'restrictive catch limits' and 'unburden our commercial fishermen from costly and inefficient regulation.' Federal fishing laws, including the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, require careful management to keep fisheries sustainable into the future. Unregulated fisheries have collapsed in the past, leading to regional economic disasters. Part of the impetus for the executive order, a senior NOAA official told the council, is the long-term decrease in overall seafood landings. Prior to 2020, about 9.5 billion pounds of seafood was harvested commercially each year, said Sam Rauch, NOAA Fisheries' deputy assistant administrator for regulatory programs. Now that total is down to about 8.5 billion pounds, Rauch said. He acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in the reduction, as did economics. At their Newport meeting, council members raised concerns that the push for increased production might clash with the practices of responsible management, especially if there is less information to prevent overharvesting. Nicole Kimball, a council member and vice president of a trade organization representing seafood processors, cited a 'disconnect' between the goal of increased seafood harvests and the 'drastically lower resources' that managers normally rely upon to ensure harvest sustainability. The typical approach is to be cautious when information is scarce, she noted. 'if we have increased uncertainty — which we'll have with fewer surveys or fewer people on the water — then we usually have more risk, and we account for that by lowering catch,' she said at the meeting. In response, Rauch cited a need to cut government spending in general and NOAA spending in particular. That includes the agency's fishery science work, he said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'We have to think about new and different ways to collect the data,' he said. 'The executive order puts a fine point on developing new and innovative but also less expensive ways to collect the science.' Even before this year, he said, NOAA was struggling with the increasing costs of its Alaska fish surveys and facing a need to economize. The agency had already been working on a survey modernization program prior to the second Trump administration. The Alaska portion of the program, announced last year, was intended to redesign fisheries surveys within five years to be more cost-effective and adaptive to changing environmental conditions. Foy, in his testimony to the council, said job and budget cuts will now delay that modernization work. 'I can almost assuredly say that this is no longer a 5-year project but probably moving out and into the 6- or 7-year' range, he told the council. Since Alaska accounts for about 60% of the volume of the nation's commercial seafood catch, it is likely to have a big role in accomplishing the administration's goals for increased production, council members noted. Alaska's total volume has been affected by a variety of forces in recent years. Those include two consecutive years of the Bering Sea snow crab fishery being canceled. That harvest had an allowable catch of 45 million pounds in the 2020-2021 season but wound up drastically reduced in the following year and shot down completely in the 2022-23 and 2023-2024 seasons because of a collapse in the stock. Another factor is the shrinking size of harvested salmon. Last year, Bristol Bay sockeye salmon were measured at the smallest size on record. The total 2024 Alaska salmon harvest of 101.2 million fish, one of the lowest totals in recent years, had a combined weight of about 450 million pounds. Past years with similar sizes harvests by fish numbers yielded higher total weights. The 1987 Alaska salmon harvest of 96.6 million fish weighed a total 508.6 million pounds, while the 1988 Alaska salmon harvest of 100.6 million fish weighed in at 534.5 million pounds, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
USA Today
03-04-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Florida baseball loses another key player for season to injury
Florida baseball loses another key player for season to injury Florida can't seem to shake the injury bug this season. First, the Gators lost starting pitcher Pierce Coppola, who still hasn't returned to action after leaving during the second week of the season. Jacksonville transfer and draft prospect no longer roams center field at Condron Family Ballpark due to a season-ending shoulder injury. Lefty specialist Frankie Menendez is also done for the year and needs Tommy John surgery. Other arms, such as redshirt sophomore Jake Clemente, Sante Fe transfer Matthew Jenkins and team ace Liam Peterson, have also battled injuries this year. The latest name to join the list is junior second baseman Cade Kurland, a critical piece of Florida's offense and infield. After multiple attempts to return from a shoulder dislocation suffered during the Miami series, Kurland is officially done for the year, according to Kevin O'Sullivan. "Yeah, (Kurland's) going to have surgery in another week or two, so he'll be out," O'Sullivan said. "It's obviously unfortunate, but I don't think he was left with any other decision to make. We'll get him back, hopefully, next year and help him with his recovery. I know he was really disappointed. He tried to do everything he could to play, even when he played against Florida State in Jacksonville. He tried everything, but it wouldn't have been fair to him to continue to play." D1Baseball recently named Kurland a top-10 second baseman at the college level, and he's draft-eligible this summer. It's possible that he's played his last game in a Florida uniform, but the program will do what it can to retain him during the offseason. Naturally, the injury will hurt his draft stock and there's potential to become a Day 1 pick with a strong senior year, so there should be plenty of optimism that Kurland will return. Kurland finishes his junior year slashing .316/.490/.605 with three home runs and 15 runs batted in. He'd upped his walk rate significantly from single digits over the past year to 19.6% through 51 plate appearances. His 10 walks equal the number of strikeouts on the season, too. Follow us @GatorsWire on X, formerly known as Twitter, as well as Bluesky, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Florida Gators news, notes and opinions.
