Jazz Standard

The story

Every Monday night for years, three Mingus ensembles rotated through the basement at 116 East 27th Street — a de facto residency that turned a restaurant downstairs into something rarer. Danny Meyer opened Jazz Standard in the fall of 1997, when the upstairs room was still just called Standard. The Mingus Big Band eventually won a Grammy for a live album recorded right there. The Maria Schneider Orchestra came back every Thanksgiving from 2005 to 2019. New York named it a top five jazz joint. In December 2020, COVID closed it for good.