Non-profit jazz venue finds a new long-term home

Photo via Flickr user Sam Anvari/Flickr CC

The Jazz Bakery, Billy Childs Jazz Chamber Ensemble with Antonio Sanchez, Scott Colley & The Ying String Quartet. The Jazz Bakery has worked out an agreement with the Culver City Redevelopment Agency to occupy a vacant property along Washington Boulevard.

The Jazz Bakery - a non-profit jazz venue displaced from its longtime location more than a year ago - announced Thursday that it has found a new home.

For 16 years, a barrel-vaulted former garage in Culver City’s old Helms Bakery complex served up piping hot jazz most nights a week.

A new landlord ended the Jazz Bakery’s lease and set the organization on a new course that included “moveable feast” concerts at theaters throughout greater Los Angeles.

The non-profit’s president and artistic director, Ruth Price, says concerts will resume in a permanent spot at the end of next year. The Jazz Bakery has worked out an agreement with the Culver City Redevelopment Agency to occupy a vacant property along Washington Boulevard.

The same area is home to a thriving downtown in which Center Theater Group’s Kirk Douglas Theatre, restaurants and art galleries have taken root in recent years.

Price says that a $2 million Annenberg Foundation grant will help develop a two-story venue with two listening rooms - and that the movable feasts will continue, too.