This time, it was The Mitch Shiner Sextet playing. The band riffs on current pop songs and rearranges them into more jazzy pieces. They advertise themselves as a musical crossroads, somewhere between Jay-Z and George Gershwin.
Mitch Shiner, the band’s leader and drummer, is a recent IU grad. He introduced the band’s version of Royals.
“We went for a sort of medieval arrangement,” he said. They ended to a round of loud applause that rivaled the volume of the music.
Shiner laughed.
“So was that almost unrecognizable?” he asked. The crowd laughed, too. While he was standing, he took a moment to lean in toward a camera and wave.
“This is probably the first time ever a concert has been live-streamed from Bear’s for all the world to see,” Shiner said.
Joe Anderson, the band’s trumpet player, said it was also their first real gig.
“We’ve been together for about three months,” Anderson said. “Most of us are IU grad students.”
One of them isn’t. Wayne Wallace, who plays trombone in the sextet, is a professor of practice at IU. He is based in San Francisco and is a five-time Grammy nominee. The sextet also has links to the Grammy awards.
“Our album was nominated to be nominated,” Anderson said. He and some other band members laughed.
As plates of food and trays of beer ran out to tables, the band bounced onstage. The saxophone and trumpet gleamed under the blue lighting.
Cindy Boulet, the woman taking cover money at the door, said a lot of patrons were regulars.
She pointed to a row of booths.
“They’re regulars,” she said. “All the gray-hairs, too, are regulars.”
David Miller is responsible for the long-standing concert series. Miller said he started the band Jazz Fables in September of 1989.
“When I started it, it was a house band and then a guest for the second set,” Miller said.
Miller said he eventually had to change the format when two original band members left. He said IU’s Thomas Walsh, chair of the Department of Jazz Studies, used to play in Jazz Fables.
“Often the Jazz Fables concert series includes a couple of IU students playing,” ?Miller said.
Miller said that he’s seen a lot of people come and go throughout the years.
“That’s something a lot of people don’t appreciate: that a lot of IU jazz alum play here,” ?he said.
The concerts takes place from 5:30 to 8 p.m. every ?Thursday.
