The jazz that has filled weekends at Bend’s Be Bop Coffee House for the past 18 months will stop for the foreseeable future on Sunday night when the venue closes its doors.

The coffee bar and music venue simply wasn’t making money, said Sarah Holmes, who co-owns Be Bop with her husband Michael.

”It’s disappointing, but it just didn’t work out like we hoped it would,” she said. ”We’ve been operating at a loss for kind of a long time trying to make this space work and it just isn’t.”

Be Bop for years paid its musicians for gigs, but for the past few months, the musicians have been playing for tips to try to help Be Bop break even, Holmes said.

The Holmeses started Be Bop Biscotti, a biscotti manufacturing company, in Bend seven years ago and sold it to DiLusso Bakery in April, though they remain minority owners and are involved in the operation of the business, Sarah Holmes said. In August 2005, when the manufacturing company outgrew its space on First Street and moved to east Bend, the couple opened Be Bop Coffee House in the Whistle Stop shopping center on Division Street, north of downtown.

For more than a year, the venue has hosted countless jazz musicians, from teenagers to veteran professionals, locals to out-of-towners. Earlier this year, Be Bop tried raising admission prices and booking non-jazz acts, but the move failed to bring in more money, Holmes said.

”The location isn’t perfect, but it’s also (that) it’s hard to run a music venue,” she said. ”Music venues come and go, and we gave it a real good shot.”

Jazz fans and musicians here are a dedicated bunch, but there just aren’t enough of them to sustain such a venue, she said.

”We’re kind of on the fringe of what we do, with the jazz and everything,” Holmes said. ”The jazz community in Bend is very supportive and great, but it’s also very small, even though we have some amazing players in this town.”

A group of jazz musicians and fans are scheduled to meet early in 2007 to discuss ways to either take over the venue or open another one in Bend to try to maintain the scene that has formed at Be Bop, Holmes said. But any new venture would likely have to be under the auspices of a nonprofit group, she said.

”Unless we turn it into a nonprofit that’s the only way to make it work,” Holmes said.

So the last time you can check out some live jazz at Be Bop is this weekend, and organizers have a big bash planned. Tonight will be Friday night regulars New Jazz Quartet and JazzXS, two groups made up of teenagers that grew out of Be Bop’s old Sunday-night kids’ jam. On Saturday, the Bend Jazz Quintet will gather some of Bend’s best players for a show.

And on Sunday, players and fans alike will ring in the new year and bid adieu to Be Bop with food, champagne and an encore performance by the three aforementioned bands.

Contact: 390-9587.