The Jazz Evangelism of Woody Allen

Clarinet in hand, the director defends one of America's disappearing art forms.

The Carlyle Hotel on Monday nights is, like all great Manhattan institutions, a carefully romantic transaction. For sale is a moment in Old New York, a composite of faded glamour too delicate to survive and too perfect to have ever really existed. Beneath the soft, earthy brushstrokes of an original Marcel Vertes mural, amid the soigné murmur of rustling silk and clinking stemware, 90 eager patrons of all ages gather in the Café Carlyle supper club to soak up pristine, antique luxury.

They've paid $100 or so apiece mostly to see the musician seated in the perfect center of the room, at the carpeted meridian of this alternate universe—and "see" is truly the impetus here, as the music he offers is secondary to the draw of his enormous celebrity, as contemporary a fame as the music he loves is traditional. Illuminated in dim, flickering light, the man handles his clarinet with...

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