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SFJAZZ all-star anniversary will reverberate far beyond San Francisco - San Diego Union Tribune

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/sd-et-music-sfjazz-anniversray-20161230-story.html

SFJAZZ all-star anniversary will reverberate far beyond San Francisco

by George Varga

Downtown San Francisco’s trendy Hayes Valley district is home to such major cultural attractions as the historic War Memorial Opera House, Davies Symphony Hall, the Asian Arts Museum and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. But it is the five-year-old SFJAZZ — which occupies an adjacent square block — that has inspired Megan Caper to travel to the Bay Area several times a year since she moved to San Diego in 2012.

“There’s nowhere else you can go that’s like it,” said Caper, 44, an Ocean Beach resident who is an occupational therapist for the San Diego Unified School District.

“San Francisco has such a great history for music and literature, and having a dedicated space for jazz is unique. San Francisco has terrific museums, but you can go to a museum almost anywhere. You can go to SFJAZZ, pretty much any night and hear incredible jazz music — and lots of different kinds of jazz — and that’s unique.”

Daniel Atkinson, the La Jolla Athenaeum Music & Arts Library’s veteran Jazz Program Coordinator, is also happy to sing the praises of SFJAZZ. The $64 million, three-story complex houses a 700-seat concert hall, a 90-seat club, three rehearsal rooms, a digital lab, administrative offices, a restaurant, two bars, and more.

“It’s amazing,” said Atkinson, who serves alongside SFJAZZ Founder and Executive Artistic Director Randall Kline on the board of the nonprofit Western Jazz Presenters Network.

“SFJAZZ has a very different feel than Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. In scale and scope, I’m not aware of anything that’s in the league of these two places, with year-round facilities dedicated to jazz and having educational components. That’s a pretty rare beast. SFJAZZ is a really fascinating and well-conceived facility with exceptional programs.”

Star-studded January concerts

SFJAZZ kicked off its fifth season last September. From Jan. 18 to Jan. 29, it will host a two-week-long Season Five Celebration.

The lineup includes such luminaries as guitarist Bill Frisell, trumpeter Terence Blanchard, singer Mary Stallings, tabla drum master Zakir Hussain, the Kronos Quartet, Snarky Puppy, David Crosby, drummer Cindy Blackman, the talent-rich SFJAZZ Collective Santana, and saxophonists John Handy, Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman and Miguel Zenón. Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart will be on hand Jan. 18 to present the SFJAZZ Lifetime Achievement Award to Hussain, his periodic partner in percussive adventures.

This all-star roster will perform in a spacious, state-of-the-art venue designed to maximize the live concert experience for artists and attendees alike.

The stage and sight lines provide virtually every concertgoer with a clear, unobstructed view. The exemplary audio system has been finely tuned to capture both the power and nuances of jazz, whether acoustic or amplified.

“SFJAZZ is one of those places where they really got everything right,” said San Diego-bred bass guitar star Nathan East, who performed at SFJAZZ last June with his Grammy-nominated band, Fourplay.

“On stage, you feel like you’re in the middle and making eye contact with everyone in the audience. It’s like SFJAZZ had a blank check book to create this remarkable place — in the middle of the city — without any constraints. They’ve definitely created a template for others to follow.”

SFJAZZ could have been born in San Diego

Had it not been for a simple twist of fate, SFJAZZ mastermind Kline came very close to settling in San Diego — not San Francisco — back in his days as a college student.

In 1973, the Boston-area native moved to La Jolla, where his brother still resides. Kline’s goal was to enroll at UC San Diego and study with renowned contrabassist Bert Turetzky, whose students in that decade included Mark Dresser and Nathan East.

“My brother, who had been stationed there in the Navy, agreed to put me up for a little while,” Kline recalled, speaking from his SFJAZZ office. “I loved the beaches and everything else. And La Jolla had some good jazz clubs, where people like (San Diego bass great) Bob Magnusson played.”

Alas for San Diego, Kline was so captivated by San Francisco during a weekend Bay Area visit that he moved up there a few weeks later without even having enrolled at UCSD.

“I remember crossing the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, at sunset, and it looked like Oz,” he said. “I ended up enrolling at San Francisco State. I was looking for a way to make money, and thought producing concerts was a good way to do that.”

Kline laughed.

“I learned quickly that it wasn’t a good way! I did six jazz concerts at a cowboy bar in San Jose called the Gold Rush. The first was by Kenny Burrell, followed by Dexter Gordon, Jack DeJohnette, Flora Purim and Airto, Joanne Brackeen and Richie Cole. Three of the concerts did well, three not so well. I had to quit school to make money to pay back what I lost.”

Undaunted, Kline soon began working at the Boarding House. The top San Francisco venue hosted concerts by Bob Marley, Herbie Hancock, former San Diegan Tom Waits, Al Jarreau and Steve Martin, who recorded his first three albums there.

Armed with a budget of $28,000, Kline and Clint Gilbert launched the Jazz in the City festival in 1983. They renamed it the San Francisco Jazz Festival in 1990. By 1993, the festival had a $1 million annual operating budget and drew more than 30,000 people to 19 concerts. Kline has rarely looked back since.

Exponential growth

As the festival built an enviable national reputation for the quality and diversity of its programming, Kline began to think on a grander scale. He envisioned a year-round jazz center that would appeal equally to veteran fans and young new listeners — a place that would be an intrinsic part of the community, not a gilded palace like many upscale arts institutions.

After years of extensive fundraising and careful planning, SFJAZZ moved into its inviting new home on Jan. 21, 2013.

It was a landmark achievement for Kline and SFJAZZ, which is the largest non-profit jazz organization in the Western United States. Covering 35,000 square feet, SFJAZZ presents more than 400 concerts a year. Annual attendance exceeds 150,000.

“The numbers are crazy — we have over 90 percent attendance,” Kline proudly noted.

”Our business plan was built on the premise that we’d do a certain number of nights per week, and then we’d get real revenue by making it available for (outside promoters) to come in and rent. Now, we have to fight with our own rental department to get all the dates that we want to book.”

Kline credits the success of SFJAZZ to a “secret sauce,” although he is happy to share many of the ingredients.

“We set out to do a couple of audacious things and approached some of them naively, but smartly naively,” he recalled.

“Could there be an institution for jazz, and could you establish it? Could we redefine what a cultural institution is for the 21st century? Because a lot of the other institutions are challenged. Symphonies and theater and ballet companies are all struggling.

“Institutions have an image of being stodgy, which they don’t have to be. So, how could we do something dynamic? The answer is a lot of little things — and striving to be a vibrant community center. But, truthfully, we really didn’t know if this would work.”

For more on SFJAZZ, go tosandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/

SFJAZZ Season Five Celebration

With: Joshua Redman, Joe Lovano, Cindy Blackman Santana, Stefon Harris, Snarky Puppy, the Kronos Quartet, Stefon Harris, Miguel Zenón and others.

When: Jan. 18-21

Where: SFJAZZ, 201 Franklin St., San Francisco

Tickets: Prices vary for each concert

Phone: (415) 283-0342

Online: sfjazz.org/celebrate5

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