Long Weekend: The Armistice Ball, Buck and a Quarter Quartet, Bickford Theater Benefit, Rum House, Nighthawks at the Iguana

Since this is a nationwide newspaper, I normally don’t report on local jazz events unless it’s to draw your attention to a noteworthy individual or ensemble that I feel should be on your radar, either in the event said musicians are coming to a venue near you, or you happen to be in the greater (and I do mean “greater”) New York area and might like to make the time to see them. Indeed, the fact that I mention them is a de facto recommendation. In mid-November I took a mini-vacation to “greater New York,” and herewith is a wrap-up of what I saw and heard. The Armistice Ball is held on November 11, or the Saturday closest to it, in Morristown, NJ. I had not been to this event before, so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. But I knew all the musicians on the card, and that was incentive enough to go. This is a dance, not a concert. I believe I was the only non-dancer among the 50 or 60 attendees, nearly all of whom were dressed in World War I-era attire. I simply sat along the wall and watched and listened as the emcee called the dances. The Metropolitan Club Orchestra was led by drummer Sue Fischer, who for almost the past two years has lived about 15 miles from me in Lancaster County (but that’s about to change due to a re-assignment in her day job). Dan Levinson was on clarinet and alto, Jim Fryer on trombone, Dalton Ridenhour on piano (keyboard), Mike Kuehn o