When a dancer steps in front of an audience that’s not familiar with her work, the rush of applause that follows is often a response—not necessarily a shallow one—to that first flash of her beauty, and what it might portend. There’s an expectation, before the performance begins, that in her body, in the grace or strength or certainty of those first few steps, is a glint of mastery—of technique, artistry, generosity—that’ll stretch out and build, carry the show. When Woody Allen ambled onstage with a clarinet tonight, the sold-out crowd roared in a tidal way, but it wasn’t for his music. That first crash of applause was a love letter we’d all been mentally composing to him since seeing Annie Hall, recited hastily in the car on the way over and delivered via a riot of thousands of handclaps. Some folks in the audience were familiar with the genial strain of jazz Allen has championed through his septet, but it’s safe to say that they were in the minority tonight. The rest of us were staggered across a spectrum stretching from curious to reverent. We were there to hear music, sure, but we were holding our breath for some banter. Mr. Allen peremptorily defused that particular hope when he approached the mic early on in the set. “We play for our own amusement,” he said, “and we’re shocked when people come out to see us. We try to play as authentically as possible, dance-hall music, church music, whorehouse music. So sit back, relax, and we’ll do our best to entertain you.” Ah, right. Carry on. We luuurve you, you know. We loave you, we luff you.

Perched on a stage-within-a-stage that looked like a pile of old luggage, Allen’s cavalry was made up of the sort of dusty older gentlemen you see on stoops or in parks, waving canes at each others’ chess moves. Throughout the night they whispered among themselves, shared lead vocal duties and switched instruments like they’d known each other for millions of years. Everything between them was gentle and funny, completely in sync—it was only the audience, at points, that seemed out of place. The band had no set lists—when a song ended, the banjo player would usually bark out another one and it would launch without fanfare. Allen often appeared sullen, pensive, but every time he played, especially during the bouncier clarinet solos, he knocked it out of the park. Over the course of two hours, the inflections of the band’s calls-and-responses started to sound like punchlines to private jokes. This, and the wistful, studied nostalgia that’s part of Allen’s  stock-in-trade, resulted in a performance characterized by effortless charm. It was a nice contrast to Allen’s persona, which also banks on formidable charm, but the sort that’s enhanced by the weight of the perceived effort—deliberately clumsy, painfully self-aware—that he pours into it.

Songs like “Swinging On A Star” and “Slow Boat To China” amped the charm up to a comical degree. Long before the encores, large crowds left their seats to press against the stage. The band looked bewildered, but happy enough. I was hoping to hear them take a crack at “Dippermouth Blues” (a.k.a. “Sugarfoot Stomp”) tonight, a 1923 smash by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band. It is mischievous and delighted with itself like no other song, and in its insistent, unapologetic, joy it sums up the genre nicely. There are about 40 versions of it you can hear on Spotify right now—the best is arguably by Fletcher Henderson and Rex Stewart, but the sweetest is the version Allen and company released on the soundtrack to Wild Man Blues, the 1997 documentary that provided a window into his musical compulsions.

Partly because we were a stone’s throw from Hollywood, it was interesting to see a person do something creative purely for the pleasure of it. When a creative pursuit is generated from pleasure and the result objectively sucks, the pursuit is usually called self-indulgent. But when the result gives pleasure to others, the pursuit is a rare, generous thing. Allen is 76. His last film grossed over $50 million. He doesn’t seem too thrilled to be around a lot of humans, with their pointy haircuts and phone cameras probably stabbing his personal space all the damn time. He does not need to leave the house. But he likes to play. He likes to spread the word about this lovely thing. There’s tremendous pleasure to mine in New Orleans Jazz, if tonight was any proof. At least a few thousand more people know about it now, because this codgery icon tossed it into their heads. That first set of applause might have been for Allen’s films, but the last, to his credit, was for his music. 

—Amalia Levari (words + photo)