Le Caveau du Max
- Address : Avenue Emile Max 87, 1030 Schaerbeek, Belgique
Doors open - 19:15
Italian buffet (all you can eat) - 7.30pm
Concert in 2 parts - 8.30pm
A stone's throw from the RTBF, the Os à Moelle and Theatre 140 is the Caveau du Max. As its name suggests, this small jazz club has found refuge in the pleasant vaulted cellars of an excellent Sardinian restaurant: "Le Max".
The cellar could only have remained a very pleasant place to enjoy an excellent buffet of antipasti if Jean-Marie Hacquier had not passed by, more or less eleven years ago.
This devil of a man, journalist for Jazz Hot and organiser of numerous jazz events in Belgium and elsewhere, suggested that day to Roberto Pintus and Antonio Piras, the owners of the restaurant, to open this beautiful place to jazz.
The idea appealed to them and since then the Caveau du Max has gained a good reputation. Better still, two years ago, the place was enlarged to allow for an even better appreciation of the different groups who come one Thursday evening a month to offer the most beautiful music there is: jazz.
The formula is simple and effective. You arrive around 7.30 pm. You take the small staircase that leads you into an intimate and warm room with beautiful exposed bricks. You enjoy the excellent dishes spread out on a long table and, at about 8.30 pm, the concert begins. All this for about 27 euros.
It is imperative to make a reservation, as the 55 seats are quickly filled. It would be a pity to miss out on this opportunity when you know that you will be able to listen to jazzmen ranging from Philip Catherine to Jean-Louis Rassinfosse, Herman Sandy, Jean Warland, Ben Sluijs, Roger Vanhaverbeke, Steve and Greg Houben, Pascal Mohy, Bart Defoort, Fred Delplancq, Quentin Liégeois, Jef Neve, Pascal Schumacher and many others, in excellent conditions and almost acoustically.
Although eclectic and open, Jean-Marie makes it a point of honour to always make the programme accessible to the ears of a sometimes uninformed public. It must be said that the clientele here is a pleasant mix of amateurs and neophytes.
Go down to the Caveau, you'll only come back happier.
(Jacques Prouvost, Jazz In Belgium #68, October 2009)