All that … and jazz.

Dazzle owner Donald Rossa will realize a dream 15 years in the making Friday when he officially moves Denver’s premier jazz club into its new home in the city’s Denver Performing Arts Complex – the largest of its kind in the nation. Think of it as two blocks and a world away.

Dazzle’s move into the long-vacant corner at 14th and Arapahoe streets fills a large cultural void under downtown’s iconic artistic arches. Now, at long last, alongside opera, ballet, live theater and the symphony comes world-class jazz.

“This is where we belong because jazz needs to be in the city’s cultural arts center,” Rossa said. “Jazz is a big part of our city’s legacy, and our city’s history.”

It’s a rich history that includes big-band jazz at the Trocadero and Rainbow ballrooms. The Rossonian Hotel in Five Points. Woody Herman’s jazz ranch in the Denver foothills. El Chapultepec, the late, iconic blues joint in what is now called the Ballpark neighborhood.

And Dazzle, opened by Karen Storck and Miles Snyder in 1997 at 930 Lincoln St. as a restaurant with recorded jazz as its soundtrack. Rossa became a managing partner in 2001 and decided after the 9/11 attacks that Dazzle needed to start hosting live jazz. Since then, in three locations, Dazzle has been home to national and local legends spanning Charles Burrell, Ron Carter, Carla Bley, Ron Miles, Bill Pursell, Christian McBride, Benny Golson, Mary Louise Lee, Erica Brown, Otis Taylor and Samara Joy, who was named Best New Artist at the 2023 Grammy Awards (regardless of genre).

Dazzle will add to that history on Friday and Saturday (Aug. 4-5) with two shows each night featuring Denver’s Grammy-nominated René Marie and pianist Dawn Clement, who moved to Colorado in 2018 in part to become an assistant professor at Metropolitan State University Denver. I’ll always know Marie from the wrenching solo performance of her harrowing abuse-survival play “Slut Energy Theory” back in 2009.

Rossa specifically asked Marie and Clement to open the new Dazzle for one transparent, timely reason: “It was important to me that the opening (performers) be women,” he said. But also Marie because she has been a confidante for decades, and he even consulted with Marie on the design of the new place.

Her main advice: “Give me mirrors,” Rossa said. Rest assured, the dressing rooms – and the bar’s primary women’s rooms – have wall-sized mirrors.

Walking into the new Dazzle feels very much like walking into the old Dazzle. Not its home of the past six years in the historic Bauer’s building at 1512 Curtis St. – the first Dazzle on Lincoln Street.

Like the original, the new place is a severely horizontal, 4,300-square-foot rectangle that essentially splits into two (soon-to-be) partitioned spaces. To the right is the stage where ticketed concerts will be held for up to 140 people. It’s called “The Main Listening Room,” in keeping with the overall vibe of the place, which has its socially relevant new motto written right on the wall: “Listen more.”

That, Ross said, speaks to the value of shutting up and actively listening to music while visiting in Dazzle – and it speaks to the value of shutting up and listening more to the world around us in 2023.

The stage does not sit at the far end of the room but was instead conceived more like a thrust theater stage. It juts out from the long side closest to 14th Street, creating seating on three sides. Most of that seating is individual chairs accompanied by small cocktail tables. In front of the stage, the back row is only the third row, and it is lined by one contiguous, comfy plush couch. No one, Rossa said, will be seated more than 20 feet from the stage.

The ceiling is low, the feeling is intimate and the vibe is totally like the good old days. Only everything here feels classy and new. “Remember the old bathrooms at Lincoln?” Rossa said with a laugh. “No rats in the bathrooms and cocaine on the mirrors.” No, 1980s Studio 54 this is not.

The other room o the left of the entrance is a bar and piano lounge that will stand as an ongoing, audible tribute to the vast legacy of El Chapultepec, which operated for 87 years at 20th and Market streets before closing in December 2020.

The casual new “El Chapultepec Piano Bar at Dazzle” will host “The Late Set” from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on Thursday through Saturday nights starting in the fall. The bar will be open to the walk-in public even during ticketed concerts. You can hear the music from the bar – but you can’t see the show. In rare instances, when demand is high, Rossa can remove whatever eventually divides the two rooms, expanding capacity to 240 for select shows.

As a city tenant, Dazzle will not only benefit from its massive marketing efforts but it will also have the opportunity to book huge shows in the nearby 1,800-seat Ellie Caulkins Opera House that would have been far out of its reach. It also gets increased exposure by booking about 40 outdoor “pop-up shows” each year in unexpected places around the arts complex.

Here’s what’s not changing from the old Dazzle: There is never a cover charge to sit at the bar to eat or drink, even during (most) ticketed events.

Here’s what is changing: The food and beverage menu is completely new. Everything will be locally sourced and prepared in partnership with area farmer’s markets. They’re called “artisan markets,” and they’ve become quite the rage around Denver. It’s when you gather a collection of local restaurants and vendors under the same roof. “The Denver Ear” funnily called them “hipster food courts.” Dazzle’s local partners include Kettle Head Popcorn, The Chocolate Therapist and Pint’s Peak Ice Cream.

The interior of Dazzle could qualify as its own art exhibit. The walls are dedicated to honoring Denver’s considerable jazz and blues history – most notably the legacy of El Chapultepec, which opened as a mariachi bar in 1933. Wall-sized mural subjects include Marie, the late Miles and Burrell, the still very much alive 102-year-old bass legend.

In 1949, Burrell became the first Black musician to be brought on as a member of a major American company when he was hired by what is now the Colorado Symphony. And if you look closely toward the back, you might spy where Burrell already has signed the wall with an inscription that reads, “Thank God for getting me here. Charlie Burrell, 2-16-23.”

There are other meaningful nods to seminal women in Colorado jazz; to late El Chapultepec owner Jerry Krantz; and to radio station KUVO pioneers Flo Hernandez-Ramos and Carlos Lando, who recently retired after 50 years at the station (the first two broadcasting from El Chapultepec). Other honored Chicano jazz influencers include Freddy Rodriguez Sr., Tina Cartagena and Arturo Gomez.

Dazzle’s walls are filled with a variety of artworks from eight local commissioned artists, including Detour, SA Bennett, Shay Guerrero, Matt O’Neill and his son, Tom. Rossa estimates he has paid out a cumulative $56,000 for their artistic contributions.

Rossa considers himself a bit of a “jazz cat,” but even he had to admit to being blown away by “Big Horn,” a tactile, three-dimensional installation of a Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep by local artist Brett Matarazzo, whose contribution simultaneously manages to honor both the official state animal and El Chapultepec. If you look closely at the pieces that make up the sheep’s head, for example, the details reveal screened images from the Pec, as the famous bar was known.

Rossa really did ask Matarazzo for a cat, at first. But “Big Horn” turns out to be an additional nod to horns. As in, the singularly identifiable jazz instrument section.

On that score, you might also want to shoegaze for a few seconds at Dazzle’s pitch-perfect new logo, a seemingly simple design that shows the name of the club surrounded by circular album grooves. “That’s part of it,” Rossa said. “But look closely. Is it just an album? Is it also the bell of a horn? I also think it’s the circle of life.”

Rossa signed a long-term deal with the city that assures its place in the Denver Performing Arts Complex for many years. He said things won’t change all that much with the city as his new landlord – except to say that part of the deal is that no lines can be allowed to form outside the front doors. But there should be no need for that because anyone waiting to see a show can walk right in and wait in the bar area.

On that score, Ginger White-Brunetti, executive director of Denver Arts & Venues (and essentially Dazzle’s landlord), agrees that Dazzle “is going to be a vibrant addition that will enliven the downtown arts complex.” And the venue, she said, “looks fantastic.”

This move has been a long time coming for Rossa, who admits that Dazzle, like El Chapultepec, very nearly did not make it out of the pandemic alive. It only did so because of individual, corporate and federal relief – and the local jazz community as a whole.

David Spira, owner of the Baur’s Building, forgave more than $400,000 in rent when Dazzle was closed by the shutdown. Patrons offered up more than $30,000 to help staff pay their living expenses.

“That’s the only reason we came out the other end,” Rossa said. “And to me, that’s community all day long.”

To Rossa, the only appropriate response to receiving a hand up himself was to offer others the same. So Dazzle, in turn, shifted its otherwise shuttered operations into a community-wide food pantry serving hundreds of struggling artists. Which probably helps explain why the Dazzle faithful came through with another $200,000 for the relocation effort. Rossa’s personal investment in the move, he said, was about another $600,000.

Much is now riding on Dazzle’s success – and not just for Rossa. In the last good year before the pandemic, Dazzle paid out $1 million in artist wages, making it an essential player in the local music economy. And Dazzle presently supports a staff of 35, down from 55 before the shutdown.

Rossa hopes to hit that number again someday. But in the meantime, as Dazzle prepares to open its doors on Friday, it’s already looking like it’s right where it belongs on the corner of 14th and Arapahoe.

“I think it’s nice that the city is recognizing jazz’s place in the cultural fabric of the city by putting it in the same facility where the symphony, operas and Broadway musicals are performed,” said Dazzle spokesperson Kelley Dawkins. “By putting it here, the city is recognizing jazz as a highly appreciated art that brings great value to the larger community.”