Jazz label Blue Note opens new venue in Los Angeles, festival partnership

New York’s renowned Blue Note Jazz Club will hit the LA music scene in 2025.

The Greenwich Village club — long considered one of New York’s elite jazz clubs — will open a new Hollywood venue in March, with performance spaces for 200 or 100 people and a full restaurant. The club already has outposts around the world, including Napa, Hawaii, Tokyo, Italy, China and Brazil.

The venue will once again collaborate with Grammy Award-winning artist and composer Robert Glasper to curate events in LA, building on his long-standing artist residency “Robtober.”

“It is an honor to once again partner with Blue Note to create an important cultural intersection for the Los Angeles community. “Los Angeles has always been a second home to me and I can’t wait to bring LA culture to Blue Note,” Glasper said in a statement.

The venue comes at a mixed time for local jazz clubs, as some popular venues have closed and others are undergoing renovations to hold on.

Additionally, the venue will become the new flagship partner of the Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival, which will be renamed the Blue Note Jazz Festival (it began as the Playboy Jazz Festival in 1979). Presented by the LA Phil, the reimagined festival debuts June 14 at the Hollywood Bowl. The full line-up will be announced on February 18th, with tickets going on sale in May.

The Napa edition of the Blue Note Jazz Festival Napa kicked off in 2022 with a mix of hip-hop and R&B, featuring headliners Nas, Mary J. Blige, Chance the Rapper and Maxwell.

“We are thrilled to partner with Blue Note to launch the Blue Note Jazz Festival at the Hollywood Bowl,” Kim Noltemy, LA Phil president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “This partnership represents a shared commitment to celebrating jazz and its extraordinary artists while continuing the Bowl’s legacy of world-class music. Together, we look forward to creating an unforgettable experience for jazz lovers in Los Angeles.”