Golden Hour Jazz
Percy Diner & Bar
1700 N Front St.
Philadelphia
May 7, 2026
When Percy Diner & Bar opened in May 2025, it would’ve been hard to predict that the site would become one of the most reliable homes for Philly’s diverse vinyl record culture. Located under the EL in Fishtown, the colorful, retro-styled dinner hosts the Sound Lounge, a cozy listening room where some of the city’s finest selectors spin music from their collections. On any given night, you’ll hear DJs Lady Prowl playing Electro, New Wave, and Post-Punk or Skeme Richards spinning choice Disco cuts on Fridays.
On Thursday, May 7, I pulled up to Golden Hour Jazz, my man Marcus Moore’s weekly residency at the Sound Lounge. A gifted writer and passionate promoter of Black music, Moore is the mind behind the New York Times’ “5 Minutes” series and author of The Butterfly Effect: How Kendrick Lamar Ignited the Soul of Black America and High and Rising, a cultural biography about Long Island rap legends De la Soul. Armed with such a wide breadth of knowledge of Black musical history, it’s natural that Moore’s set at Golden Hour Jazz would be a stunner. My ears immediately pricked up when Moore played “Spring," a gorgeous late '60s modal jazz tune by The Chris Shilder Quintet. Schilder’s warm piano chords completely filled the room at Percy as Winston Mankunku Ngozi’s gorgeous lines on tenor sax cut through like a bolt of lightning. Once Moore played Herbie Hancock’s “Good Question," a complex piece full of shifting time changes, I had to get up out of my seat and ask what I was hearing. Traversing eras and styles throughout the evening, Moore touched on everything from Hard Bop and vocal jazz to fusion, West African percussion and the avant-garde. Moore’s style of playing records was expansive in a way that honored jazz as a profoundly diverse musical tradition.
