21 Verkhnyaya

Radishchevskaya ul.

Metro: Taganskaya

Tel: 915-1042

Cover: From 50 to 200 rubles

on concert nights

Parking: By the curb

The club is located across the street from the Taganskaya metro station in the Taganka Theater Building. The neighborhood has clearly affected the spirit of the club. Maybe if it did not share premises with the alternative theater, the club would have been yet another monster of mass culture with ubiquitous gambling machines, striptease and deafening house.

Nonetheless, Le Club offers some pleasures for the flesh, including 6 varieties of draught beer, a good choice of Cuban cigars, wines and delicious dishes cooked by a new chef.

The specialty of the house, Le Club steak, costs $15, lamb carre is $19 and truffle biscuit is $7.

Monday, Friday and Saturday are club days featuring intimate and refined music frequently interrupted by the applause and ovation of the audience. Le Club's visitors are not casual passers-by; they are lovers, admirers, performers and composers of jazz.

A newcomer will either flee cursing, after the second saxophone solo, leaving half his food uneaten, or will stop breathing, enraptured, and join the others, cursing himself for having not visited the club before.

It is worth recalling that jazz was very scarce in the Soviet Union, and not only listeners, but jazzmen themselves, are still at the stage of discovering the world of jazz.

As regards the music, all the plaudits are for Igor Butman - art director of the club and a well-known jazz performer, both in Russia and beyond.

Also, he has good connections in New York and uses them to invite interesting foreign bands to perform in Le Club.

Igor Butman's Big Band plays in the club on Mondays.

Basically, Le Club is one of Moscow's best jazz joints.

Perhaps many admirers of jazz would say jazz played

in the West is more technical and refined.

Moscow jazz maybe a bit rough and raw, sometimes naive, but more exhilarating, like everything nascent.