Café Noir sets the mood on Fridays at Annona

On Friday nights, Annona Restaurant in Westhampton Beach is all about smooth.

The lights are set so low they’re practically off. Customers sit around the bar sipping red wine and cocktails by candlelight. They come, in part, for the two-for-one drink specials during happy hour, which lasts from 5 to 7:30 p.m.

But it’s the music that clinches the mood. From a dusky corner near the bar, next to a wall illuminated by inset candles, a jazz quintet plays through the night. The tunes waft through the room in a sort of perfect balance—loud enough to fill up the space, but soft enough to permit the dozen conversations playing out along the edge of the bar and across the tables.

The band, Café Noir, has set the tone for Annona’s Friday night atmosphere since it was first booked there about a year ago, according to the restaurant’s service director, Antonio Bottero.

“They fit so well with our clientele, and they fit so well with the vibe of the restaurant,” Mr. Bottero said.

The sounds that flow from vocalist Nathina McDuffie, 23, who hails from Shirley, have an effortless quality that belies her age, a quality imprinted on the band behind her. Almost all of the members are music students at local colleges, and they coax notes from their instruments with the kind of ease that comes with years of practice.

They run through their performances with the same looseness, mixing up the sets each week and deciding on the songs at the last minute. Their repertoire consists mostly of numbers from jazz’s heyday in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. They always open with “Black Coffee,” a song made famous by Ella Fitzgerald, and they always close with “Take Five,” a piece written by Paul Desmond and first performed by the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1959.

A recent performance also included “Misty,” a jazz standard written in 1954 by the pianist Erroll Garner, and “April in Paris,” a piece from the 1930s Broadway musical “Walk a Little Faster.”

The origins of Café Noir are something of a mystery, even to the band members themselves. The five musicians had all crossed paths as youths on the local jazz scene, and the group just sort of fell together about two years ago, according to drummer Byron Preston, 28, of Center Moriches.

“When we showed up for our first practice, it was like, ‘Oh my God, you know him?’” Mr. Preston said.

Guitarist Ken Zach, 23, of Patchogue is, like his bandmates, a precocious master of his craft, his fingers moving fluidly from jazz chord to complex jazz chord, occasionally breaking into smooth and understated solos. His cousin Keenan Zach, 22, of Coram backs him up, plucking a steady stream of walking bass lines for the lengths of the sometimes four-hour performances. The group is rounded out by Teddy Motz, 19, a native of Quogue, on saxophone.

The quintet almost never rehearses, according to Ms. McDuffie, instead choosing to wing it at their Friday night gigs. And they’re good enough to get away with it, Mr. Bottero said.

“They just know the songs because they’re just trained musicians,” he said.

Antonio Bottero and his younger brother Pietro, the proprietor and chef, have been running the Italian restaurant on Riverhead Road for five years. The brothers, who hail from Manhattan, said they shoot for a comfortable, easy-going atmosphere at the bar, which is part of the reason they booked Café Noir.

“Jazz is one of those things that, even if you don’t like jazz, you have no trouble listening to it,” Antonio said.

Antonio described his patrons as an eclectic bunch, comprised mostly of year-rounders. On a recent Friday night, the clientele ranged from college students to music lovers who have already retired.

John Hulle of Eastport said that he often comes to Annona to pass the time during the slow winters. He said he’s caught Café Noir’s act five or six times.

“The girl sounds nice,” Mr. Hulle said of Ms. McDuffie. “She plays very old jazz.”

The group performs every Friday night, beginning at about 6 p.m. Sometimes, the sets last as late as 10 p.m., according to the band members.

“If there are people here, we keep playing,” Ken Zach said.

Café Noir plays at Annona on Riverhead Road in Westhampton Beach on Fridays starting at 6 p.m.; call 288-7766.