Second Street Jazz

Second Street Jazz

Big band jazz is just one of the many musical styles performed at 2nd Street Jazz

By David MacNeal

Little Tokyo's original jazz bar

You stare at what's called a sanbou – a small, Shinto offering tray made of wood. Adjacent to it is a framed black and white photo of the late trumpeter Kohei Matsumoto, wearing a Dixieland hat, as he tilts upwards to hit a high note.

"This man started the music scene in Little Tokyo," says the trumpeter's son, 41-year-old Koichi Matsumoto. The shrine hides in a walled corner. Look at the photo long enough, and you can almost hear what he's playing. That's until the backdrop of heart-rattling screamo (courtesy of Pillars of Salt) reminds you you're in Downtown's most eclectic music venue, Second Street Jazz.

Deceiving name, isn't it? Seeing as this is the Mos Eisley Cantina of music – yes, it is. Different galaxies. Different genres. Punk rockers, reggae heads, jazz aficionados. One might worry that a venue with too much variety could lose substance.

Owner Matsumoto thinks otherwise. "There are no color lines, which makes it so refreshing for me." And with cross-genre music events running seven days a week for over six years, Matsumoto proves otherwise.

To make this work, Matsumoto developed a symbiotic relationship with numerous music promoters. Organizer Johnny Munger brought the indie scene from Silver Lake, and created the infamous rock mash-up The Cocaine (now a four-year-old event). Kanzaki Ryo, who originally managed Japan sensation Thee Out Mods, began J-Town favorite Judo Chop. And performing monthly are bands like Psych, a 17-piece Latin jazz orchestra from East Los Angeles College, adding to the multiverse of sound.

As Matsumoto puts it, "You've got to build a collective."

"Second Street is one of the most diverse crowds we've played in front of," remembers Kevin Preston, singer for glam-tastic Prima Donna, which headlined a Judo Chop event.

Tonight, Genji Sato is at the PA helms and plays Prima Donna's "Demoted" overhead. Wearing tiger-stripe boots and a cow skin vest, Sato looks like John Wayne on acid. "I just wanted to be a cowboy," Sato says. "So I come here from Japan." He's a big supporter of local Japanese bands like Inazuma, and is one of Judo Chop's biggest fans.

And to think, Little Tokyo's musical charm is all thanks to a Dixieland trumpeter from Osaka, Japan.

The youngest of seven children, Kohei Matsumoto was allotted a lot of creative freedom. After studying jazz at Kansai University, Kohei moved to Los Angeles where he came deeply embedded in the jazz scene during the '70s. And it was during a jam session at the Shangri-La bar in Torrance where Kohei met pianist and soon-to-be wife, Yasuko, daughter of RCA Victor big band recording artist Hideo Harima.

"They met in a bar. They loved music. So it was a natural course to open a music venue," Koichi says about his parents. "All of this seems like destiny."

While Koichi did develop a fondness for jazz and singing, his initial pursuits during the '90s were made in the diamond industry. After graduating from the Gemological Institute of America, he worked for Internet companies like Bids.com and Jewelry.com as a business consultant. And then his father had a revelation.

Kohei had fought and won a bout with pancreatic cancer. Given his renewed perspective on life, he told his children, "I've never started a family business, so let's start one." They opened a chicken rotisserie called Birdland in what is now the residential ballast of apartments on Second Street and Alameda, and shortly afterward opened Second Street Jazz in 2002.

Beginning with their first weekly artist, hip-hop musician MC Miwa, the venue steadily gained a plethora of musical acts, and opened new doors for people, like jazz pianist Gary Fukushima.

"There's a dearth of jazz venues in L.A.," Fukushima says. "I'll always be grateful for the opportunities Second Street allowed me to meet other musicians." He co-founded the Los Angeles Jazz Collective in 2007.

Koichi has also experienced change.

"It's humbling," he says about going from a jewelry man to "scrubbing dishes and mopping toilets." He traces a serpentine line down the thumb of his left hand he recently got cutting limes. Instead of getting 20 stitches at a hospital, he put a tourniquet on and worked all night. "You learn about people. You learn about yourself."

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