Brent Birckhead, photo by Ray Marshall.

We’ve often stated here that Bohemian Caverns has become the District’s finest jazz club. Owner Omrao Brown has shown impeccable taste in his programming, and so it’s no surprise that top-flight artists are willing to call the club home for a weekend’s worth of sets.

The club’s success, however, does not stop with drawing world class artists and their attendant crowds. The Caverns is special because its management has taken active steps to tie the club’s success to that of the local arts and jazz community. Not only is the space home to regular open mics, but it also features the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra, one of the best jazz deals in town, but each month Brown also chooses a local artist to serve as a month long Artist-in-Residence, whereby that musician gets a weekly Tuesday night slot to experiment and develop material.

September’s artist-in-residence is Brent Birckhead, who is already familiar to people who follow the local scene. The 27-year old saxophonist performs regularly with the Bohemian Caverns Jazz Orchestra, and performs regularly with a number of area musicians.

“My first goal is to have fun performing with my friends,” Birckhead said of his approach to music. ” If i can accomplish that, I can pretty much be sure that we are creating high level music that the audience will enjoy.”

A native of Baltimore, Birckhead comes from a musical family. He started playing saxophone at age 10 at his father’s behest. In addition to a brother who played trumpet growing up, one of his two sisters has also gone on to become a professional musician. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Howard University’s renowned jazz program, and also taught woodwinds in D.C. Public Schools for three years. Currently, he splits his time between New York and the District, and has performed with the heavyweights such as Eric Benet, George Duke, Lalah Hathaway, Al Jarreau and Jimmy Heath.

For this month’s worth of performances, Birckhead is teaming up with guitarist Samir Moulay, pianist Tim Whalen, bassists Eric Wheeler and Karine Chapdelaine, as well as drummer Howard Franklin. Birckhead is using his residency to develop original material that will eventually be recorded.

“Simply put these are some of the best musicians in the country, playing with the top names in music,” he said of his colleagues. “They are also all my friends which makes it easy.”

In addition to building his own repertoire, Birckhead hopes to make a his own contribution to the broader jazz community here in the District. Acknowledging that D.C. is a “world class jazz city” in terms of talent, Birckhead also feels the city is lacking in certain key elements for the scene to thrive.

“It’s lacking venues that musicians can come and enjoy each other, like a [Cafe] Nema or U-topia,” he said. “The jazz loft is bringing that feel back, but for a city with so many musicians there should be somewhere to go every night and play. This is not the reality anymore.”

Brent Birckhead will be performing at Bohemian Caverns every Tuesday night in September. 7 and 9 p.m. sets. $10.