For twenty years now,The Fringe has played a weekly Boston-area gig. The Jazz trio--sax man George Garzone, bassist John Lockwood, and drummer Bob Gullotti--first got regular at Michael's in 1974, when they were still fresh out of Boston's Berklee School of Music. The stayed there for seven years, before doing a year or so at the old 1369 in Inman Square.

Both Michael's and the 1369 are now closed (the 1369 was recently reopened as a coffee shop), but The Fringe still has its weekly show. Garzone is now considered one of the elder statesmen of the Boston jazz scene, and all three members of The Fringe are recognized as musical masters.

Last Wednesday, like almost every Wednesday for the past decade, The Fringe arrived at The Willow Jazz Club in Somerville around 9:30 to set up. Garzone and Gullotti walk in first, snapping on the lights, greeting the waitress, hauling in their equipment.

Garzone puts down his sax case and goes through a door to the other half of The Willow--the bar. When he opens the door, the TV can be heard on top of some stilted conversation. There's only one person at the bar when Garzone buys a scratch ticket from a machine. "The jazz scene around here is very dead," he says. "The town and the people gave up on it. When the clubs starting closing, a lot of the musicians gave up and moved."

Michael's and the 1369 are just two of the clubs that have closed down in the past decade, along with such other Boston area mainstays as Paul's Mall, Debbie's and Lulu White's

And when clubs close, musicians move else-where. Bands like Human Feel, a popular and critically acclaimed progressive jazz outfit that used to work in Boston, have relocated to New York. "New York is such an epicenter of jazz," Associate Professor of Music Graeme Boone says. "There's really no comparison."

And yet musicians like Garzone stick around. "There will always be a lot of great people who live here, people like Alan Dawson, like Jerry Bergonzi, like George Schuller and George Garzone. People establish lives in Boston, and a lot of people don't want to be in New York. It's a question of the quality of your life and the decisions you make," says Boone, who taught last semester's popular core, "Jazz: An American Music." "Basically, it comes down to a personal decision."

"I have a family here," says Garzone. "I grew up around Boston. It's safer for my children here. But shit can't happen without support. Without people's support, there's no music. People need to support live music."

The Boston jazz scenedoes not suffer from a lack of musicians. Still, it continues to be plagued by an onagain/off-again audience, a diminishing number of clubs and steady exodus of young players to New York.

Two ritzy hotel bars--the Regattabar in the Charles Hotel and Scullers in the GuestQuarter's Suite--have become major players in theBoston-area scene, booking a combination ofbig-name, nationally known talent and localartists. Both of these hotels offer combinationroom and concert packages for one reduced price, aprice in excess of $100.

Both the Regattabar and Scullers make theirpreference of clientele crystal clear: catering toupper-middle class suburbanites and intellectuals,these bars give off an aura of seriousness, withtheir five-dollar drinks and conscientious maitred's.

Last week the Charles Hotel had Ahmad Jamal andDave Brubeck playing on the same night (Brubeckwas in the ballroom, Jamal in the Regattabar.) Inthe next couple of months, Joe Henderson, SonnyRollins, and McCoy Tyner will all play at thehotel. These are some of the pioneers of jazz,some of the true wizards of this magical music.Jazz lovers are lucky to have the chance to seethem play live.

These types of shows sell out, often regardlessof the quality of the music: Jamal was playingwith a drummer he had met a week and a halfearlier. But the same patrons who shell out bigbucks year after year to hear the masters playwill not be found in the smaller clubs. InBoston's increasingly upscale environment, thediminishing number of joints like The Willow standout because of their lack of pretense. Indeed, TheWillow's wall-to-wall, industrial strength,redish-brown carpeting (which is actually on thewell), small linoleum tables and pastiche of 70'sjazz-album covers taped up near the ceiling forgea distinct sense of place hard to find in theRegattabar, with its predictable hardwood floorsand delicate candelabras.

There remain a handful of small clubs like TheWillow that continue to offer live jazz almostnightly, clubs like Ryles in Inman Square andWally's in Boston. The Middle East in CentralSquare, besides offering up indie rock,occasionally brings in avant-guard jazz:clarinet-wizard Don Byron came in January, andsaxophonist Dewey Redman will be there February16. And the Square's own House of Blues mixes NewOrleans jazz in with their regular blues shows.

Unfortunately, the future of jazz at some ofthese clubs is in question. The Middle East isabout to cut down radically the number of jazzshows they bring in. "There'll be occasionalshows, but nothing on a regular basis," saysMichael Haggerty, who is finishing up his stint asthe Middle East's jazz booking agent.