Tag Archives: University of Pennsylvania

Blog, Cultural Heritage, Cultural Heritage Preservation, Jazz Venues

New Foxhole Café

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While an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Jon Hinck co-founded the New Foxhole Café in West Philly. Now a lawyer, environmentalist, and former member of the Maine House of Representatives, Hinck recounts:

The space in the basement of the parish hall of St. Mary’s Church hosted two jazz clubs. The one opened by Geno Barnhart [Geno’s Empty Foxhole] perhaps as described above. It closed by the end of 1972. In 1974 a club called the New Foxhole Café opened in the same space started up by a collective including Larry Abrams and myself, Andy Charnas, Rene Charnas, Jules Epstein, Michael Shivers and others.

New Foxhole Cafe, exterior view

Sam Rivers, Sun Ra, Hank Mobley, Philly Joe Jones, Rufus Harley, Dave Liebman, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Pharaoh Sanders and Anthony Braxton all played there.

Foxhole concerts were broadcast over Penn’s radio station, WXPN-FM. Sun Ra & His Arkestra’s “The Antique Blacks” was recorded in the radio station’s studio on August 17, 1974 (the album was not released until 1978).

Jazz Landmarks, Main Channel

Irvine Auditorium

From Wikipedia:

Irvine Auditorium is a performance venue at 3401 Spruce Street on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was designed by the firm of prominent architect Horace Trumbauer and built 1926–1932.[1] Irvine Auditorium is notable for its nearly 11,000-pipe Curtis Organ, the world’s 22nd-largest pipe organ (by ranks),[2] originally built for the Sesquicentennial Exposition of 1926 and donated to the university in 1928. The building was opened in May, 1929.

The 1987 Mellon Jazz Festival was dedicated to the Heath Brothers who performed in the auditorium on June 25, 1987.

irvine-auditorium-exterior-e1425510516831