Haggerty will continue to remain active in jazzaround Boston--he is helping to organize a SteveLacy concert in Saunder's Theater in April--butseems glad that he won't be working at The MiddleEast anymore. "It was real hard to do showsthere," he says.

"The club situation around here is verydifficult. Jazz is sophisticated music, intenseart music, but clubs need to worry about sellingdrinks to make a living. If we packed a room butdon't sell $3000 worth of Budweiser, the show isconsidered a failure.

"Places like the Regattabar are successfulbecause they invest in blue-chip commodities, inproven returns. They won't book people who are onthe cutting edge, or guys just starting out andtrying to make it," Haggerty says.

Indeed, considering the number of musicians inthe area, there is neither enough venues nor theaudience for everyone to play as much as somemight like. "There are so may musicians here,"says trombonist Bill Lowe. "Boston has a reallyinteresting mix of young and old musicians, amixture that doesn't get exploited enough."

Lowe, Professor of Music and African AmericanHistory at Northeastern University, helps organizeNortheastern's annual John Coltrane MemorialConcert. "The difficulties we have in sharingmusic are not because of a lack of creative,active musicians--what's at issue is when and howthe music can be heard. There is enough talent tofill Five or six new clubs."

And so Boston manages to maintain aconsistently serious, albeit small, scene, a scenecontinually invigorated by students from thecity's world renowned schools. "It's interestinghere," Boone says. "With Berklee and the NewEngland Conservatory, students are always comingfrom all around the world."

Once they graduate, many ambitious youngmusicians migrate to New York, where there areboth more musicians and more places to play.Benjamin Waltzer is one of these young musicians.

Waltzer headed down to New York after hegraduated from Harvard in June. As Waltzer notes,"so many of the musicians in New York came out ofBoston. In the last couple of years, there's beena realA-13Steve Turre at Scullers