Jazz has always had a sort of cinematic allure to me; that quintessential smoky setting and tone that shines best in off hours, after hours, late night.

Since the 2007 Rochester International Jazz Festival in June, The Quinn Lawrence Trio has held the after hours jazz jam at The Flat Iron Café at the corner of Lyell Avenue and State Street. There are plenty of jams throughout the city, but the 25-year-old tenor saxophonist's weekly affair is a little more hardcore. Musicians can get together to get their post-gig ya-yas out as the line between late night and early morning blurs into dawn. There's a modest crowd, but it's there to dig the music. It's a happening scene, man, and probably the only one of its kind in Rochester. Sitting there, taking it all in, you wonder why.

"To put it simply," says Lawrence, "I don't think anybody thought of it before because how this town is. They close up pretty early."

The Jazz Fest has definitely put Rochester on the jazz map, but a good deal of the crowds that choke downtown for its two-week run are out-of-towners. And folks around here are - perhaps just a little bit - fair weather jazz fans. They're not gung-ho enough to strike out late, late at night to hear a jazz trio play in an area of town that's a lot less pedestrian than the Jazz Fest's comfy East End digs.

"During the jazz festival, that's when the city feels alive, you know?" Lawrence says. "That's when things are happening and people are going out and doing something, hearing live music. And then when it's all over, you don't see that as much."

On a recent Saturday night - or rather Sunday morning - Lawrence, bass player Ben Thomas, and drummer Kate Gentile set up on the floor near the Flat Iron's open doorway. Latin music blasting shrill and distorted drifted in from down the street and cars whizzed close by in a southbound flash of red tail lights. This is typically the kind of neighborhood you drive through, not to.

Inside, however, the tables all bristled and buzzed with caffeine-clipped conversation and low-key cool. It was a righteous vibe. Lawrence began to sing "Witchcraft" in a casual, rich baritone. Yup the cat sings, and plays trumpet, and dabbles in bass and piano, too.

Trumpet came first. Lawrence was 10 years old and couldn't decide which instrument to choose.

"My mother said, ‘Well, Louis Armstrong was famous for playing the trumpet,'" he says. "And I said ‘Sure.'"

But it was Terrence Bruce's playing in church that dragged Lawrence over to the reed side. "Just the way he captivated the crowd," Lawrence says. "I was like, ‘Yeah man, that's really cool.' And that just basically sparked everything for what I wanted to do."

Lawrence got his undergraduate degree at the Eastman School of Music and his masters in music/jazz studies at The University of Cincinnati, and then returned here to his hometown. He has laid down a few demo tracks and is actively writing material for his first album. This all may take some time as Lawrence, though a full-blown jazz cat, won't be fenced in.

"There are so many different sides to me musically," he says. "At one point I was two-dimensional; classical and jazz and everything else was pretty much crap. That's what I was exposed to. As far as what people call ‘high-level music,' that's all I was interested in. A lot of musicians go through that phase and some of them get stuck in it. Not me. One day I popped in a James Brown record and I was like, ‘I am feelin' this.' And I really like rock because of the character of the music. I may not be playing rock per se, but I go at it with that attitude."

It's with this attitude that Lawrence's music is taking shape. It's magical and comfortable and a thrill to see a trumpet player approach the saxophone like a trumpet player - or is it the other way around?

"Basically I wanna confuse people like I've always been doing," he says. "There's just so much that I like that I want to share my passion for."

You're just gonna have to stay up late to hear it. No sweat: the Flat Iron serves a good cup of joe. 

The Quinn Lawrence Trio

After-hours jam at the Flat Iron Café, 561 State St

Sunday mornings at 1 a.m.

Free | 454-4830