A hot summer is in the works as artists and audiences reunite
As Jackie Gage took the stage at Mr. Tipples, she removed her mask with a dramatic flourish, revealing the 1,000-watt smile concealed underneath. Cheers from the judiciously spaced audience made it clear that her gesture was understood, but Gage knew this was a moment to savor.
Just about every song in her set celebrated brighter horizons, from her breezy opener, the Bill Withers anthem “A Lovely Day,” to the closer, a triumphant take on Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now.” It was two weeks before California officially reopened on June 15, and Gage’s performance with pianist Tammy Hall’s trio offered a tantalizing glimpse at the pleasures ahead.
Live jazz is back, though San Francisco’s Mr. Tipples jazz club is still a rarity. For the next few months, musicians will be performing outdoors more than in. But good news is pouring in from every direction.
Forced to cancel last summer’s festival for the first time in more than six decades, the Monterey Jazz Festival is back on Sept. 2426 with a scaled-down event taking place almost entirely in and around the fairgrounds’ main arena. The reduced footprint means the festival will have only a fraction of its former capacity, with 2,500 tickets available daily to allow for social distancing.
“You can’t just flip the switch and reopen if you want to do it thoughtfully and safely,” said Tim Jackson, the festival’s artistic director. “It takes some time to retool. You can’t plan if you don’t know what you’re planning for, so we decided to keep it more intimate to make sure we’re presenting great artistic product in a way that artists and audience will feel comfortable.”
Focusing on internationally touring artists and ensembles, the festival lineup features both long-established masters such as Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Pat Metheny’s Side-Eye and Terri Lyne Carrington + Social Science, and young stars like this year’s artistin-residence, pianist Christian Sands, vocalist-pianist Kandace Springs and the festival’s commission artist, Tokyo-born, New York-based composer Miho Hazama and her brass and strings ensemble m_unit.
San Jose Jazz is taking a similarly restrained approach to Summer Fest on Aug. 13-15, scaling back its flagship festival to five stages, less than half its prepandemic size. The main action will toggle between bigname acts on the Plaza de Cesar Chavez and a stage on the south end of the plaza focusing on blues and New Orleans acts co-presented by the Fountain Blues Festival. Summer Fest also includes performances in the Montgomery Theater, the San Jose Museum of Art and the new SJZ Break Room.
“It’s a smaller footprint, but within that framework can provide an equivalent experience,” said Massimo Chisessi, San Jose Jazz’s director of marketing. “For a lot of people, the mainstage is the festival. I’m feeling very good about what we’re planning.”
Many more acts will be announced in the coming weeks, but so far Summer Fest includes Morris Day and the Time, the Kurt Elling Quartet with Charlie Hunter, Judith Hill, Ozomatli, the Motet, Shamarr Allen, San Jose’s 7th Street Big Band, Butcher Brown, Bloco do Sol and the Pete Escovedo Latin Jazz Orchestra.
Several organizations are taking advantage of the warm weather and Stanford University’s newly rebuilt Frost Amphitheater to keep the jazz flowing before returning indoors. The Stanford Jazz Festival and Stanford Live kick off a bustling summer schedule at Frost with a powerhouse encounter between saxophone star Joshua Redman and tabla legend Zakir Hussein, with vibraphonist Joel Ross and bassist Zach Moses Ostroff on July 1.
Stanford Live has also teamed up with SFJazz to co-present a series of Thursday night concerts at Frost, starting with Oakland’s multi-Grammy Awardwinning bluesman Fantastic Negrito on July 8. Pianist Robert Glasper and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin’s Dinner Party (with special guests Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah on trumpet and DJ Jahi Sundance) serve it up on July 15.
San Francisco favorites Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers dish up a tangy serving of Kansas City swing on July 22, and the SFJazz Collective revisits the seminal funk and fusion of Sly and the Family Stone’s “Stand!” and Miles Davis’ “In A Silent Way” on July 29. The alfresco season closes with vocal star Gregory Porter convening with Bay Area mainstays Marcus Shelby Quintet featuring singer Tiffany Austin on Aug. 5.
The outdoor programming by heavyweight presenters shouldn’t obscure the invaluable work done by smaller organizations to keep jazz artists employed throughout the pandemic. Jazz in the Neighborhood and the Bay Area Jazz Mobile have presented dozens of free shows in public spaces, including the Marin Country Mart in Larkspur and North Beach’s Washington Square Park (where veteran saxophonist Michael O’Neill plays 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday).
The Back Room in Berkeley has transformed its downtown cul-de-sac into a weekend venue featuring a wide array of musical styles. For jazz fans, Friday’s performance by drummer Jeremy Steinkolker’s Mo’Fone, a mighty trio with saxophonists Larry de la Cruz and Jim Peterson, is of special note. The TonaLaura Jazz Duo, the richly orchestrated partnership of pianist-composer Laura Klein and guitarist-composer Tony Corman, perform on Sunday afternoon.
Oakland saxophone explorer Phillip Greenlief is playing a series of hourlong duo concerts under the rotunda at the Palace of Fine Arts with fellow reed experts, including a July 3 tête-à-tête with Elizabeth Schenck and an Aug, 14 encounter with Sheldon Brown.
Jazz fans looking for a nightclub experience don’t have as many options for the time being. Mr. Tipples was one of the first San Francisco jazz spots to reopen. Presenting Thursday through Saturday, the restaurant and recording studio has lined up some of the region’s best players (Jackie Gage returns with the Tammy Hall Trio on July 2).
The Royal Cuckoo in San Francisco’s Mission District reopened with a blast of soul on June 15 as Lavay Smith enchanted a musician-studded room of celebratory regulars with trumpeter Mike Olmos and Chris Seibert on the Hammond B-3 organ installed behind the bar. An idiosyncratic neighborhood joint that has long served as home base for Smith and Seibert, the cozy music room regularly presents soul, jazz and R&B experts, and its survival offers a welcome ray of optimism amid the pandemic’s wreckage.