What it is
The Nash is a jazz club on Roosevelt Street, a block east of Central Avenue in downtown Phoenix’s arts district, and it is unlike the other jazz rooms in the Valley in two ways: it is a nonprofit, the flagship venue of Jazz in Arizona, Inc., an organization that goes back to 1977, and it is a listening room rather than a lounge. The bar is at the back, the chairs face the stage, and the room is quiet when the band plays. It opened in 2012 and carries the name of Lewis Nash, the Phoenix-born drummer who became one of the most recorded sidemen of the last forty years.
The programming is dense: close to 300 nights of live music a year, split between ticketed evening concerts by touring and local players, late-night sets that carry no cover, a casual Thursday series, student ensembles from the club’s own education center, and jam sessions. The education side, the John Dawson Jazz Education Center, teaches adults and kids, and the student showcases are part of the calendar.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Scottsdale has jazz, and our live music note tells you where: two hidden rooms, both lounges, both good, plus the annual Scottsdale Jazz Festival. What it does not have is a room built for listening, where the band is the reason you came and nobody at the next table is on a first date. The Nash is that room, 22 minutes from Old Town and a block from the light rail, with ticket prices a fraction of a Scottsdale lounge’s two-drink minimum. It is also all ages, which no Scottsdale jazz room is.
The practical version
Twenty-two minutes from Old Town by car, or the light rail to Roosevelt and Central. Check the online calendar; buy ticketed shows ahead because the room is small. The late sets are free. Street and lot parking on Roosevelt and the side streets, harder on First Friday. Full bar, no real food, so eat first.
When to go
Any month; this is an indoor room and summer is as good as winter, with the bonus that downtown’s summer evenings are empty of the First Friday crowds. The calendar is the thing to watch rather than the season: the evening concerts are the headline, and the Late Night Jazz sets afterward are the local secret. Thursday is the casual series. The first Friday of each month, Roosevelt Row’s art walk fills the street outside and the club is part of the circuit; it is fun and it is the one night parking is hard.
What to do here
Sit close and listen. The evening concerts run the range of the music, from straight-ahead quartets and vocalists to Latin jazz and the occasional big band squeezed onto the stage; the touring names come through on weekends, and when Lewis Nash himself is on the bill the room is gone within days. The late sets are looser, a house rhythm section and whoever is in town sitting in, and they cost nothing. The student and faculty nights from the education center are earnest and often very good, and they are the place to take a kid who plays.
Eat before you come. Bacanora is a ten-minute drive west and makes the best two-stop evening downtown offers; the dozen restaurants on Roosevelt Row within walking distance are the easy version. For a rock show the same night, The Van Buren is a mile southwest.
With kids
Welcome, which is rare for a music room in this metro. A teenager who plays an instrument will get more from an evening here than from most things on a Scottsdale vacation. Small children, no; it is a quiet room and a late one.
The neighborhood
Roosevelt Row is downtown’s arts district, the blocks of murals, galleries, bars and small restaurants along Roosevelt Street from Central to 7th Street, with the Phoenix Art Museum and the Heard a mile north on Central. The Nash sits at its western end, a block from the light rail, which is also why it is the easiest downtown venue for a Scottsdale visitor without a car.
The story
Jazz in Arizona was founded in 1977 as a presenting organization, putting on concerts around the Valley without a home of its own, in a metro whose jazz history ran through hotel lounges and a few long-gone clubs. In 2012 it opened The Nash on Roosevelt Street, in a storefront in a district that was still mostly galleries and empty lots, and named the club for Lewis Nash, who grew up in Phoenix and had become one of the most in-demand drummers in jazz, on records with Tommy Flanagan, Betty Carter, Ron Carter, Joe Lovano and a long list of others. Nash has stayed connected to the club, and his appearances are its biggest nights.
The club’s growth tracked the district’s. Roosevelt Row filled in with restaurants and apartments through the 2010s, the light rail brought people who did not want to park, and The Nash added the John Dawson Jazz Education Center with adult classes, private instruction, a summer camp and youth programs, and started the Jazz Beacon Awards for the Arizona jazz community. It now presents roughly 300 nights a year, the densest jazz calendar in the Southwest, as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that depends on donors as well as the door.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s jazz has always lived in hotel and restaurant lounges, from the resort bars of the 1960s to the two speakeasy-style rooms that carry it now, which our speakeasies note covers. The players are often the same: the rhythm sections working a Scottsdale lounge on Friday are on The Nash’s late set Saturday, and the club’s education programs have trained a good share of the young musicians now gigging in Scottsdale’s rooms. The Scottsdale Jazz Festival draws from the same pool. Think of The Nash as the clubhouse and Scottsdale as the paying gig.
Getting there
From Old Town, west on Indian School Road or McDowell Road to Central Avenue, south to Roosevelt Street, east one block; the club is on the north side of Roosevelt. Street parking on Roosevelt and the numbered streets, plus small pay lots; on First Friday, park farther out and walk. The light rail stop at Roosevelt and Central is a block west, and the train runs late enough for the evening concert but check the schedule before counting on it for the late set; our getting around note has the details and the rideshare math back to Scottsdale.