Jazz is supposed to be an endangered art form, according to some critics. But there’s a lot more jazz out there than the doomsayers suggest.

You will find jazz in Astoria, Portland, Seattle and Chicago. In New York City jazz is alive and well. Over a recent weekend my wife and I took in two shows while in Manhattan.

On a whim on the Thursday night we arrived, we passed through the small door of the Iridium Jazz Club, on Broadway and 51st Street. The gatekeeper at Iridium asked whether we were with the jazz journalists who were gathering downstairs, or there for the show. KMUN offers some of the best jazz on radioI was tempted to show a press credential and fake the jazz lingo. Instead we paid the cover charge and got a table near the stage to hear the Nicholas Payton Band.

Payton is a young trumpeter whose playing reminded us of the stark and simple lines that typified Miles Davis.

Payton’s group went from one number to the next without interlude or words to the audience. In fact, Payton said nothing until the end of the set, when he identified his musicians.

On the following night we went uptown and upstairs to the fifth floor of a new building on Broadway at 60th Street. The trumpeter who has given jazz new visibility, Wynton Marsalis, has established a set of venues collectively known as Jazz at Lincoln Center. We went to the club called Dizzy’s Jazz Coca Cola. Unlike the basement warrren of Iridium, Dizzy’s was a high-ceilinged space, and the next table was not 12 inches away. Lewis Nash and his musicians played with a view of Central Park South at their backs.

Nash is a renowned drummer. Every member of his group was a stand-out.

Saturday night was not, strictly speaking, about jazz. We went to the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, a Mecca for cabaret singers. The Oak Room is a long rectangle of a room, with banquettes against the wall and tables in between. The singer and her back-up are at the center. The attraction that night was Andrea Marcovicci, who has acted in movies and soap operas, so she brings a theatrical flair to her vocal art.

Marcovicci styled her evening as an invocation of Hildegarde. Chances are you don’t know about Hildegarde, who was a legendary night club singer in her day, earning some $17,000 per week in the 1950s and living in a 10-room suite of the Plaza Hotel while performing in its night club.

Our companions that evening are Long Islanders. They are former journalists whom we knew in Washington, D.C., where we had babies at about the same time.

Walking into the Oak Room is like a return to the 1940s. I always feel as though we should be smoking cigarettes, and the women should be wearing hats and gloves.

OK, so we’ve covered New York. What about Astoria? Well, KMUN-FM airs some of the best jazz on radio at 6 p.m. weekdays except Friday. My favorites are Chris Gilde (All that Jazz) on Tuesday nights and Ben Hunt (The Jazz Enthusiast) on Thursdays. When Vern Barth is on Wednesday night, his vast repertoire is awesome. KMUN’s emerging jazz host is a woman simply known as Jeanine. She does a great show.

The new jazz presence in Clatsop County is John Hopkins, with whom I shared an American history course at Portland State University. John brought the Portland group Tall Jazz to the Performing Arts Center in December as a benefit for Columbia Memorial Hospital Foundation.

John’s new concept is Jazz for All Seasons. That would be four jazz shows annually at the Liberty Theater. It should be a lot of fun.

Jazz is America’s gift to music. It has been said that America’s contributions to world culture are the Constitution, baseball and jazz.

– S.A.F.