Billy Hart's quartet opens a run at Smoke on Wednesday, Nov 18

The drummer's long-running band with Ethan Iverson, Mark Turner and Ben Street settles in on Broadway for the first of five dates.

There are jazz bands that get together for a tour, and there are bands that have been playing together for more than two decades. Billy Hart's quartet is the second kind, and on Wednesday, Nov. 18, it starts a run at Smoke Jazz & Supper Club on the Upper West Side.

Hart leads the band from the drums, with Ethan Iverson on piano, Mark Turner on tenor saxophone and Ben Street on bass. Nov. 18 is the first of five dates listed for Hart, and tickets are on sale through Smoke's own box office. Hart plays Manhattan more than any other market in our records, so this is a hometown residency in all but name.

The band's history is part of the draw. The group formed in 2003, originally billed as the Ethan Iverson–Mark Turner Quartet before it became the Billy Hart Quartet (ECM). Its first album came out on High Note in 2006, and it moved to ECM in 2012 with *All Our Reasons*, followed by *One Is the Other*. The latest, *Just*, arrived on ECM on Feb. 28, 2025, with ten originals written inside the band (ECM; Glide). Time Out New York has called it one of the finest working bands on the current jazz landscape, and Marlbank gave *Just* five stars.

There are jazz bands that get together for a tour, and there are bands that have been playing together for more than two decades.

That longevity is what you're paying for. Twenty-plus years means a shared vocabulary that four players picked up separately simply can't fake: the way Turner and Iverson trade space, the way Street and Hart lock in under them. Iverson has written about the band on his own site going back years, and the New York Sun has described the quartet at Smoke as thoughtful without being overly intellectual.

Smoke is the right room for it. The club sits at 2751 Broadway, between 105th and 106th streets, the stretch also known as Duke Ellington Boulevard (Untapped New York). It reopened in an expanded space in 2022 (Time Out), and that same year it signed a 30-year lease, a long-term commitment to the neighborhood (West Side Rag). It's a supper club, so dinner and the music come together.

The practical bit: book through Smoke's site, and do it early for an opening night. If Wednesday doesn't work, the band has more dates on the run.

A great drummer, a band two decades deep, and a room on Broadway built for exactly this. Uptown, on a Wednesday in November, that's about as New York as a night gets.

Sources: All Our Reasons — ECM Records (ecmrecords.com); Just — ECM Records (ecmrecords.com); The Billy Hart Quartet Delivers Top Shelf Jazz On Lively 'Just' — Glide Magazine (glidemagazine.com); Billy Hart Quartet — Time Out New York (timeout.com); Billy Hart Quartet, Just, ECM — Marlbank (marlbank.net); Billy Hart Quartet — Ethan Iverson (ethaniverson.com); Billy Hart's Riveting Jazz Quartet, at Smoke This Weekend — New York Sun (nysun.com); Smoke Jazz Club — Untapped New York (untappedcities.com); The iconic Smoke Jazz Club is finally reopening next month — Time Out (timeout.com); Smoke signs 30-year lease — West Side Rag (westsiderag.com); Tickets — Smoke (tickets.smokejazz.com)