Gala ballet opening
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In the middle of a tempest, winds howling and heavy rain whipping about outside of the gleaming $64 million building at Fell and Franklin streets on Wednesday, Jan. 18, the SFJazz Center celebrated its fifth gala. Guests in designer suits and stilettos breathlessly hustled inside for the center’s annual gala — an evening featuring an all-star cast of jazz musicians, including the SFJazz Collective, saxophonists Joe Lovano and Joshua Redman, guitarist Bill Frisell, vocalist Mary Stallings, and trumpeter Terence Blanchard.
Zakir Hussain, the North Indian tabla maestro who was on hand to receive the SFJazz Lifetime Achievement Award, flew in from Bangalore for the occasion.
“He brought many things with him,” said SFJazz gala chair Tim Dattels inside the venue’s Robert N. Miner Auditorium, as patrons took their seats. “He brought the monsoon — and he brought his father’s tablas.”
Over the past few years, the focus of the gala has shifted
“We are not afraid to cross genres or cultural divides.” SFJazz founder Randall Kline
away from the party atmosphere and more toward the music.
This year’s reception was among the leanest, with a brief cocktail soiree — largely celebrity-free — featuring a performance by the SFJazz High School AllStars serving as a warmup for the lengthy concert and after-party jam.
The SFJazz Center has defied the odds since opening in 2013, in part due to its creative programming choices, thriving as other jazz venues across the country have shuttered.
“We are not afraid to cross genres or cultural divides,” said SFJazz founder Randall Kline, by way of introduction to a transcendent collaboration between Hussain and the Kronos Quartet on the song “Tonight Is the Night.”
The set list for the evening echoed that sentiment, mixing classical and big-band, fusion and Bollywood.
The gala served as a sort of homecoming for several players who performed for the organization over the decades: Redman, whose first gig for Kline was as a Berkeley High School sophomore in 1984; Frisell, a former SFJazz resident artistic director who paid tribute to the late vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson, a founding member of the SFJazz Collective; and Stallings, a previous Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, who showed up for a sultry rendition of “Angel Eyes.”
“It’s great to have the SFJazz family here,” said Kline, who started his Jazz in the City series of concerts in 1983 and persevered through the years, bringing the SFJazz Center to fruition and standing proudly on its stage to mark the milestone anniversary.
The celebration continues through Sunday, Jan. 22, with a series of SFJazz tributes for greats who called the Bay Area home. Stefon Harris pays homage to Hutcherson on Friday, Jan. 20.; Redman organizes a Saturday, Jan. 21, event for the San Francisco tenor sax titan Joe Henderson; and Miguel Zenón is music director for the Sunday, Jan. 22, set in honor of John Handy.
Hussain and Handy closed out the party on Wednesday with a sweet, simple jam — the saxophonist turning around and beaming as the tabla master performed with lightning-speed precision and proficiency, sitting cross-legged on a rug, surrounded by half empty water bottles, his jacket and a duffel bag.
Following a film clip in which luminaries like Herbie Hancock, Michael Tilson Thomas and Alonzo King heaped praise on Hussain, Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart, a friend since 1970, showed up to honor him in person.
“This man,” Hart said, “has probably put more time in the groove than anybody else in the world.”