San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SFJAZZ
For most of her life, Mavis Staples, 80, the legendary gospelR&B singer, has committed her soulful voice to musical joy and justice, performing on the front lines of our nation’s civil rights struggles.
And during the recent SFJazz Gala, Staples, a Grammy winner and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer (among numerous other accolades) was honored with the cultural organization’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Following a rousing musical promenade into the Robert N. Miner Auditorium by the Robin Hodge Williams Choir (from Oakland), SFJazz founderartistic director Randall Kline paid tribute to this petite powerhouse who, in the 1960s, joined Martin Luther King Jr. at his marches with her Staple Family Singers band to sing their “freedom” songs.
“This is the house,” Kline toasted, “that could not have been built without your spirit.”
The buoyant Staples, who exquisitely sang two songs (including “Change,” from one of the two new albums she recorded in 2019), thanked the soldout crowd: “Yes, it has been a lifetime; a wonderful lifetime. And God is not through with me yet!”
Her spirit has influenced everyone from Bob Dylan and Prince to Ben Harper, along with the gala headliners who sang Staples’ praises at this joyful jam.
Blues harpist Charlie Musselwhite credited Staples’ voice with healing him when he battled tuberculosis. Rosanne Cash (a recent SFJazz resident artistic director) cited Staples’ lifelong devotion to social progress as an inspiration to her own commitment.
And the first time Bonnie Raitt heard Staples sing, she was simply “gone.”
“Mavis Staples is a revelation,” said Raitt. “I was knocked out by the inspiring, uplifting message of faith, love, freedom and equality. And of course, by Mavis’ extraordinary, onceinalifetime voice.”
Even Mayor London Breed swung by to join this chorus, officially proclaiming it “Mavis Staples Day in San Francisco” prior to Staples’ stand at
SFJazz for two stunning concerts.
Led by SFJazz trustees and gala cochairs Denise Young Smith and Mick Hellman, this swinging soiree, featuring a preconcert Paula Le Duc dinner for deeppocketed donors, also benefited SFJazz’s youtheducation programs to the tune of $1.35 million.
The evening kicked off with cocktails and canapes accompanied by skillful tunes from the SFJazz High School AllStars.
Thanks to a recent $3 million grant from the Stupski Foundation, SFJazz now annually provides free music education to 23,000 students in every public middle school in
San Francisco and Oakland. And Kaiser Permanente underwrote gala concert tickets so all teaching artists could attend this party.
“Jazz is unique in the history of the United States. And through the lens of jazz, students connect to that rich cultural heritage while learning about its relation to significant social movements,” said Hellman, a drummer and dad to three musician daughters (out of five) and whose father, the late Warren Hellman, founded the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, which Staples played in 2018.
“Whether these students wind up as musicians or mayors,” continued Hellman, “music education opens up their world and they discover new pathways of possibilities.”
The beauty of those possibilities is also evident in the SFJazz “house band”: The SFJazz Collective, a rotating cast of topnotch musicians. Since the collective’s 2004 founding, it has recorded and performed more than 120 new compositions.
The group’s range stretches far beyond the standards: This year the collective, with inaugural vocalist Martin Luther McCoy, an EssEff native, explored the music of Miles Davis and Sly and the Family Stone. In the fall, vocalist Lizz Wright will join the collective in examining and reimagining the music of Joni Mitchell.
Postconcert, 400 more revelers arrived at the exuberant afterparty, with dessert and dancing to the funky sounds of Con Brio on the main stage or grooving to the Suffers, a rollicking 10piece ensemble that shook the glasswalled Joe Henderson Lab.
The gala finale landed (as happens at soulful jazz jams) ’round midnight, with Robert Mailer Anderson taking the stage, an ancient Victrola in tow.
It’s a beloved tradition this authorfilmmaker and stalwart jazz supporter established in 2013 at the center’s heralded opening. As a former SFJazz trustee, Mailer Anderson drove the fundraising charge for the dazzling $64 million center — the nation’s first standalone jazz concert hall and education lab — built atop the bones of a Hayes Valley muffler garage.
Before dropping the needle on a groove of the 78 platter that would unleash the crackly, haunting strains of Billie Holiday crooning her classic tune “I’ll Be Seeing You,” Mailer Anderson advised guests where to gather — in the event our impeachmenttortured democracy dies.
“Let’s all meet back here,” he said. “The revolution will start right here, at SFJazz.”