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I don’t know exactly what I was expecting when I walked into the Jazzschool, but I confess I was a little surprised by the compactness of the place.

The Jazzschool manages to pack a very intimate performance space (more about this in a minute), a tiny campus store, and a charming little cafe into an area the size of a three bedroom flat. Not that it feels cramped. It’s actually quite cozy.

And the small scale doesn’t imply a lack of seriousness. The night before I stopped by to see pianist Taylor Eigsti, trombonist Ed Neumeister and his quartet played a set. For those who don’t know who Ed Neumeister is, he held the trombone chair in the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra for almost 20 years, as well as working with his own groups, the Ed Neumeister Quartet and the NeuHat Ensemble, an 18-piece hybrid ensemble fusing 21st century classical, jazz, funk and freely improvised music. Neumeister is a smoking-hot player. I’m sorry I missed him.

Now, as for the performance space itself, it’s little more than a box, which wouldn’t ordinarily make for optimal acoustics, but in a space so small, it hardly matters. The headliners perform in the front, on the floor rather than on a raised stage, within two feet of the front row (I told you it was intimate). The seating is wooden chairs, first come, first served.

I had a bite in the cafe first, and by the time I was done eating, most of the seats were already taken. The crowd skewed 30 and older, but there was a smattering of young adults, possibly students from the Jazzschool. As an aside, beginning this fall, the Jazzschool Institute (www.jazzschoolinstitute.org) will be inaugurating a program leading to a degree.

Anyway, the Jazzschool struck me as a colegial, highly civilized venue to listen to jazz in. You can purchase a latte from the cafe and chat with the concert-goers before the show, who seemed like a friendly bunch of jazz fans. In the case of the Taylor Eigsti show, the performer hung out with the crowd betwen the first and second sets, and after the show. My guess is this is more the rule than the exception.

Tickets to most shows are in the $10 - $20 range, a small price to pay to listen to such wonderful musicians.

One caveat — you might want to bring a cushion with you. By the end of the 2 1/2 hour performance, my bony ass was sore from sitting on my folding wooden chair.

Otherwise, the Jazzschool is a dynamite venue, one well worthy of support. We’re lucky to have a place like this in the Bay Area. Don’t let it go underused. You can check out the concert schedule for the Jazzschool here.

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• Taylor Eigsti - April 11nth, 2009, The Jazzschool, Berkeley, California