By Dave Roberts
While one San Francisco jazz club has closed after the next in the past two decades (fortunately, to be replaced by others eventually), a non-profit organization has been devoted to nourishing this often struggling art form. SFJAZZ, which was co-founded and continues to be lead by Randall Kline, has gone through some rough patches over the years. But it has managed to remain on its feet and is now more successful than ever in its mission to provide a home for jazz in the Bay Area. In the following interview Kline discusses the history of his organization, its current season, the state of the jazz business today, and the impact of the Ken Burns jazz documentary.
AAJ: How did you get started in this business? And what was it like in the beginning?
RK: We were founded in 1983. It was a small organization devoted to presenting Bay Area jazz artists. It's grown from there. It was hard at first. We did a lot of research. It was myself and a partner, a guy by the name of Clint Gilbert, set out to produce a jazz festival here. It featured locals. And we did a lot of research, we interviewed a lot of people that were presenting, not just jazz but blues, a lot of non-profit organizations.
We purposely set out to devise a model that was based on a non-profit-presenting model like, for lack of a better example, the San Francisco Symphony, or something. So, we started talking to a lot of people, musicians. There was an organization called the Bay Area Jazz Society and there was a number of people active.
And eventually we put together a proposal and submitted the proposal to the local government funding agency, the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund. And they approved a proposal for $10,000 to present this festival. Our overall budget that first year was $26,000. We presented two nights of concerts at Herbst Theatre and one free outdoor concert out here at Justin Herman Plaza, the Embarcadero. And presented a real broad range of jazz, as we still do. And it was a flop in year one. It was really a resounding thud.
AAJ: Why was that?
RK: What we figured we did wrong was put the diversity all in the same night. The people that wanted to hear the avant-garde group didn't necessarily want to hear the Boswell Sisters-themed act. The people that wanted to hear the Afro-Brazilian group didn't necessarily want to hear the stride pianist that night. Those are all direct examples of the types we had. We had an Afro-Cuban group, we had an Asian-American group doing mostly contemporary stuff, we had a straight-ahead bebop group. It was the debut performance of a group Mel Martin leads, called Bebop and Beyond. We covered the range from traditional, what used to be called traditional jazz, which means New Orleans era stuff, old New Orleans, through contemporary, the most out sort of stuff. We had some very popular groups in there too, but those groups drew better at their own gigs than they did at the big featured-festival gig.
And I think the reason is, and it sort of proved out in future experiments, that if they want to see their favorite group they would rather spend a whole night with them, rather than have to share them with three other bands in the same bill.
AAJ: Was that frustrating for you? Or did you just consider it a learning experience?
RK: It was disappointing, and we lost money. We had to borrow money to sort of pay back debts. We came out the second year doing it differently. We went to a thematic programming approach, where each night was devoted to a style. So we had an out night, and the next year I think we did a chamber-jazzish night, a solo-duo night. And we moved to different venues. Rather than Herbst Theater, we went to venues that we felt were conducive to the music, that help enhance the music in some way. And that worked great. We did well enough the second year to pay back the debt and squeak along to feel optimistic enough about doing a third one.
And gradually it started to expand and about 1987 we started experimenting with bigger shows, although the festival at that point was starting to get large locally. We were still limited to Bay Area acts, but we had a stacked deck of Bay Area acts: John Handy, Joe Henderson, Tony Williams, Stan Getz was in the Bay Area, Bobby McFerrin. So we were able to have headliners, nationally recognized headliners, but with locals.
In 87 we put together a show called the Stride Piano Summit, which we did at Davies Symphony Hall. It was our first big show. And that was another big theme, the same thing, it utilized a Bay Area piano player, Mike Lipskin, who served as the artistic director and brought in what we said were the greatest practitioners of stride piano living today. And brought in a guest trumpet player to work with them and a rhythm section, all great musicians. And we targeted the traditional jazz community, people who might like that. We felt if we could get a good enough showing from them that we would be able to fill enough other seats to make it worthwhile. And it worked out really well. It was a very well attended show. That show was done in the summertime.
And then we started looking at other shows to do in the summer. The next year we did a big tap show. The following year we combined another stride show with two tap shows. I think this was around 1989. And then in 1991 we eventually spun off a whole series: the Jazz Masters Series. Apart from what then started to become the fall festival, which was originally founded as the Jazz in the City festival, which was the organization name.
We started to morph the name to the San Francisco Jazz Festival around 89. It's the first time it wasn't Jazz in the City presents. We made a concerted effort in 91 that the new name of the organization was gonna be the San Francisco Jazz Festival. We started to add national acts to the festival too around the same time.
91 proved to be sort of a watershed year. It was our most ambitious year. We had great Fall Festival in 90, and we had a great Masters series in 91. And we lost money for the first time in a long time again [laughs]. We tried to figure out what is it we were doing wrong. And we seemed to be spread a little too thin in all of these big marketing efforts. So, it was the next turning point, organizationally.
We decided to combine everything into one. We also had spun off a jazz film festival as well at this time too. We had these three events: the San Francisco Jazz Festival presents, Jazz in the City, the Jazz Master Series, we had all these names going around. [We decided] to just put all our eggs in a San Francisco Jazz Festival basket, and just make that a big, giant, huge event, and take a chance. And see if the excitement of having something huge concentrated would create a big enough stir to work. And it would be one marketing effort. And it worked great in 92.
So the 91 Fall Festival was scaled back, and we did the minimal thing we had to do to limp through the year. It was an excellent festival actually. Great shows. Im laughing because they were controversial at the time. One called Cowboy Jazz, we did a western swing tribute. The purists didn't like that kind of thing. We did a duo of Eddie Palmieri and Joe Henderson that year. Some interesting stuff.
So in '92 we had an extravaganza. We had suffered a deficit and we said well just roll the dice, well do the biggest thing. If it flopped we were done for. But it didn't flop, it was great, a big success, a huge success. We started to get lots of national attention. And then we were starting to get called the best jazz festival in the country kind of accolades from Chicago. So that stuff kept rolling in. And it was great. We just kept building on that. And eventually we built back up the spring season. And last year we relaunched a whole other presenting season, which is now called the SFJAZZ Spring Season.
Two years ago we also changed the organization name. Because the Jazz in the City/San Francisco Jazz Festival mix wasn't working either because we were doing more than just the San Francisco Jazz Festival. We were doing education programs in schools. We do about 50 free concerts also summer long. We had the Fall Festival. So we wanted to come up with a name that fit the organization. So we called the organization the San Francisco Jazz Organization, SFJAZZ for short. So now everything is SFJAZZ Presents. And the SFJAZZ Spring Season is the first thing that came out of that new name.
And we brought in Joshua Redman to be the artistic director of that season, the spring season last year. We had a great launch of our first year. And Joshua is continuing to work as the artistic director of that season. He works this season and I hope as many seasons as are to come on it. That's the history in a nutshell.
AAJ: How did you pick Josh?
RK: Josh was kind of a no-brainer. About six years ago though, we were pondering building a facility. We had an opportunity, someone had offered us a piece of land. And if we were to have a facility, we had to figure a way to have a bigger presence than just what we were doing. We were looking to have an artistic director attached to it, a la a symphony organization would, it would be our Michael Tilson Thomas or whatever it was.
And Josh had been working with us since he was in high school. In fact, in the second festival he worked as a junior high school student in a presentation in that second year. And with Berkeley High he worked a couple times with us. And he had played the festival a few times in between. And we wanted to come up with someone who shared a similarly broad outlook on jazz, someone we felt would augment what we're doing rather than constrict what we were doing. And he had Bay Area roots, he grew up here, his mother still lived here, he had a lot of friends here. So he had connections to the Bay Area, understood the Bay Area, and just happens to be a brilliant saxophone player and now a brilliant composer. He seemed like a good, fresh face and intellect to have associated with it.
So I started talking to him about being the artistic director of this facility, working over a couple of years. That thing eventually fell by the wayside, the opportunity evaporated. And we started looking at expanding our programming a few years ago. And to do a spring season was the next thought. Because when we do the San Francisco Jazz Festival in the fall it's very concentrated. And unless you happen to be exceedingly well off, it's hard to see more than a few things in that short period of time. So we figured if we spread it out it would give people a better opportunity to see more things. And we had done some research around the facility years back to try to find out would people be open to a season-type event. And people definitely supported that. Because of that, we felt we were safe to do this season, and we rolled it out. We kept the Josh thread from the initial concept. And it couldn't have gone any better.
AAJ: What does he do? Does he help determine who you'll be booking?
RK: He helps determine who the artists are in the spring season. I have solely held the position up until this season, doing all the selection of artists. In this case, its semi-collaborative. Basically, we talk about ideas together. But it's definitely his vision for most of the things. Where I can give any kind of feedback, I do. It's trying to incorporate Josh's point of view into the presenting.
AAJ: How do you go about selecting the artists you invite?
RK: It's a good question. Theres a lot of artists to pick from. We try to come up with compelling themes of what's out, what sort of ideas he's had in the back of his head over the years about things to do, and what artists working are exciting right now. I have to say, we don't get to realize all the ideas that Josh has. Thats why we can continue to move on, and it's a give-and-take process. But it's strictly subjective, there is no objective criteria.
AAJ: Well, I guess you enjoy these artists yourself, and think others will want to also.
RK: Yeah there are some main bottom-line issues. Obviously, artists of highest accomplishment, of course, we pick. And, again, try to come around the thematic concept. The thematic concept that came out of that second jazz festival is what's applied to the series over the course of each weekend. So the weekend has a theme, and we are able to delve a little deeper than we can, say, in a night in the festival around certain themes.
AAJ: What are some other highlights of the Spring Season?
RK: Diane Reeves performed [on a recent] Sunday night, performing a lot of material from her new record, The Calling. It was a big production, a 32-piece orchestra along with her quintet. And also Jane Monheit performed with a quartet the first half of that concert. So, a great night. Dianes performance is one of the best weve ever presented, just as exciting as it gets. We try to present these one-time-only opportunities where we can. Dianes doing that particular production in a few places, but they are very few. But the double bill will not be repeated anywhere, I dont think, as far as I know. What we're trying to do is put together unusual combinations that work together if they can. They are not necessarily always unusual but things that make sense together.
The weekend of April 20th through 22nd is all solo piano, three different piano players performing on their own bills. Geri Allen is doing a performance, Marcus Roberts is doing three performances, three different programs, and Gonzalo Rubalcaba is doing a solo performance.
One ongoing aspect of each weekend is a family matinee, a performance we do that is geared toward families, older family members and younger family members and middle family members. And they are more informal performances, theyre about 45 minutes performances with about a 15, 20 minute Q&A. We try to get the performers to interact a little more with the audiences. They are very nice, very nice things.
And the final weekends dedicated to the bass. And we've got some amazing musicians over that weekend. Ray Brown and Christian McBride are sharing a bill with their bands. Dave Holland is sharing a bill with Mingus Amungus. Miles Perkins, who leads that band, the bass player of that band, was a classmate of Josh's at Berkeley High. Theyre also doing the family matinee that weekend, Mingus Amungus. And we're closing with a duet of Christian McBride and Joshua Redman, which is unusual, the first time that theyve done a public performance together as a duet.
As one of our board members says, we take more of a curatorial approach without all of the stuffiness that's associated with curatorial. Were trying to do a showcase of what we believe to be the more interesting things happening in jazz now. And some of that may be historical, some of that may be knew, but it's happening. Jazz being such a broad area it's very hard to hit every time. But over the course of years, certainly, over the course of even an entire season, meaning a Fall Festival and the Spring Season, youll get to see a lot of variety.
AAJ: Do you make money on all of your shows?
RK: Make money, meaning what?
AAJ: Do you get your expenses back at the minimum?
RK: Well, we don't use a model like that. Again, we are a non-profit organization. We raise money to do educational programs, to do the presentations. And overall at the end of the year we have to have more money coming in than we spend, otherwise we wouldnt be back. So overall yes, some programs bring in more revenue than others.
AAJ: What are some of the more successful types of programs or artists?
RK: We define success as a good show. And we work very hard to bring audiences to the shows. So we have a very hard-working marketing department that does that. It's one of the things that I think we do fairly well is work to bring audiences in. And we are very aggressive about it. Because of how we approach marketing and public relations, we can sometimes bring a larger audience to certain shows than might otherwise go. Maybe not, maybe misguided thinking. But the overall intent is to put good music onstage. It isn't to create a commercial success. But the bottom line is at the end of the year it has to succeed. When all works well.
But were we to have a year where we lost a lot of money, would we then present [he names a smooth jazz artist] every night? We wouldn't. We do very little contemporary jazz programming, we do an occasional concert. But if something is good we present it. And we presented more popular artists sometimes before they were popular, sometimes after they're popular, sometimes while they're popular. But just take a look at the programming over any particular year and you'll see a mix of all sorts of things. It's the Duke Ellington criteria: It's just got to be good.
AAJ: Is the economics of this business good enough that you can book an artist in the spring that appeared at Yoshis in the fall? Or does there have to be a year gap?
RK: It depends on who the artist is. But generally most markets around the country with the exception of New York it's rare to see in any music, not just jazz but in classical music or anything, its rare to see an artist come back into a market more than once a year.
AAJ: Is there a potential concern for saturation/oversaturation in the Bay Area? Is there a limited pool of artists?
RK: There's always a limited pool of artists, and a limited audience for artists. But that's in every discipline you can name. It's just a question of are you getting everybody out to the concert that could go to the concert. If an act plays at Yoshis in March, and there is clearly a bigger audience for that, we have choices. We work in halls ranging from 300 seats to 7,000 seats. It's very rare in this particular discipline to have artists be that popular where you can bring them back more than once a year.
AAJ: A lot of jazz fans, maybe Im wrong on this, have a bias toward clubs, seeing jazz in an intimate environment. What do you think are the pros and cons of presenting jazz in an auditorium-type environment versus a club?
RK: We present in clubs and concert halls. We use Bimbos nightclub, we are in boats, we are in churches. We use about 25 different venues in the Bay Area. We do a lot of concert hall presenting. And our intent is just that you go hear music so you can listen to it. We put artists in bigger concert halls that have bigger audiences. And that may be an economic dictate because the bigger artists won't play smaller places. It just doesn't work. Some artists prefer clubs, some artists prefer doing both. Josh is a good example, he likes playing at Yoshis and he likes playing in concert halls. He has to make a living, so whatever works for him. Im sure every artist its the same issue. Some artists like both and some like one over the other. Audiences like one, some like the other, some like both. It depends on the music, it depends on the artist, it depends on what your personal likes, dislikes are.
AAJ: How are you guys doing now? Would you say SFJAZZ is a success?
RK: You should tell me that. I can't. We are growing organization, we're doing something that is unique in the country. But youre the one who looks at us. You tell me.
AAJ: From my point of view, the more big-name artists who can come to this area, the better. And youre a major player in that, along with Yoshis.
RK: As far as big names. But we both, Yoshis and us, also do a lot of Bay Area artists. Our mix Id guess is at least half Bay Area artists as well as the big-names too.
AAJ: Do you get flack occasionally from local artists that you're not featuring them enough?
RK: Oh, sure, absolutely.
AAJ: How you deal with that?
RK: They're right. The bottom line is that we don't do enough. It's one of the hard parts about being in the arts/business. Ultimately there is a bottom line, and there is a formula that dictates that people have to be able to buy tickets. Nothing happens for free. Artists expect to be paid. So you have to find ways to work. I don't like to use the word local, but we hire a lot of Bay Area artists. And it's great that we are able to hire them. Would I like to do more? Sure. It would be great to be able to do more. But even within the context of hiring national names, I would like to do more too. We are barely scratching the surface there as well.
And there are other presenters in the region that do other kinds of music as well. Theres other festivals, theres other organizations, Jazz In-Flight for one does a lot of more progressive contemporary music, and that's great. They have a great festival, the Eddie Moore Festival that does more leading-edge artists. So there's a valuable niche. They also have a weekly series or maybe biweekly series at Yoshis on Mondays that features mostly Bay Area creative artists. And those are great things. We're just part of the general overall ecology. Theres a lot of other jazz presenters. There's Jazz at Pearls, there is the Stanford Jazz Workshop, there is the Jazz School in Berkeley, there's the Russian River Jazz Festival, theres a San Jose Jazz Festival, there's Villa Montalvo, there's presenters throughout the entire Bay Area that present jazz, there's a lot of jazz presenting. The San Francisco Symphony presents some jazz artists, very few. Cal Performances presents some jazz artists.
So, we may be the biggest only in that we do probably the most, along with Yoshis. But there lots of other presenters, some doing more with Bay Area artists, some not. Theres lots of good jazz education programs in the Bay Area. It's a big mix of things.
AAJ: After the Spring Season, what's next?
RK: We have a summer season that's free concerts throughout the Bay Area. We have five different locations. Here at the Embarcadero Center we have a free outdoor series. We have one at Transamerica Pyramid, there's a park, Redwood Park, theres a weekly series there. Theres a weekly series at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. There is a weekly series at Levi's Plaza as well. They range from five weeks to 14 weeks of different performances, about 50 different performances over the course of those. And those are almost exclusively Bay Area artists. There's a few exceptions, maybe 10 percent of the concerts are not.
AAJ: And what about the fall season?
RK: The Fall Festival opens October 24th and goes through November the 4th.
AAJ: Who will be performing?
RK: I wish I could tell you right now.
AAJ: Oh really? They're not booked yet, or you can't say?
RK: Some I cant say, and some arent booked. Lots of great artists, but well be announcing it shortly.
AAJ: Are there any artists youd like to get that you havent been able to for whatever reason?
RK: I'm sure there are some, but none thats coming to mind. There's been a lot of artists over 18 years.
AAJ: Are you gonna run out of themes or concepts for your weekend programs?
RK: As long as theres people making music well never run out of concepts. There's always something new, theres always something great. This is a particularly creative time in jazz. A lot of great young artists particularly right now. Theres a lot of great older artists. We could be on the cusp of a period of more jazz activity. But jazz has never, with the exception of the swing era, been popular music.
AAJ: How has the business changed in the 18 or so years youve been involved?
RK: More festivals, less clubs. A lot of the big, the iconic figures have passed away. There's less of the giants that are around. I'm just looking at the poster behind your head: Dizzy Gillespies no longer with us, Charles Brown is no longer with us, Dorothy Donegan is no longer with us. This is all in nine years. Luckily, Cecil Taylors still with us and the Mingus Big Band is still with us.
AAJ: Is the next generation filling in the gap left behind by these folks? Or is that yet to take hold?
RK: Well see. We can't predict history as it moves along. Someone was saying the other day, everyone always asks, Who's going to be the next John Coltrane? Theres also this impression that when those artists were around they were hugely popular, big, great acts. I can remember listening to the Live at the Village Vanguard recordings of Bill Evans, and theres not a lot of people in the audience for some of those performances. The same thing with live Coltrane recordings.
The best trend I see happening in jazz, and of course I would think it would be a good trend, and it's a very delicate trend, is the kind of institutionalization [of jazz]. There are some jazz institutions emerging, Jazz at Lincoln Center being one. What's great about that is that it is creating places and forums for jazz to continue, to be solid, to be around, to be an accepted part of the cultural landscape. And that's very new for jazz.
It was our intent when we started out was to build some kind of institution that was gonna outlive us. And would allow a place where jazz would be accepted culturally with other fine arts. And I think thats a good trend. Jazz as a non-profit presenting field is a new field. But there a number of good ones around the country. Theres a great organization in Seattle: Earshot Jazz. Theres a great one in Albuquerque New Mexico: Outpost. So there's a number around the country right now that are doing very good work. And a slightly different model than has existed in the past. And hopefully each city will have some kind of institutional basis.
Because I think the club model as it exists, as great as it is to listen in the club model, for whatever reasons there are less and less jazz clubs being successful. So, trying to find what the right presenting venue for jazz is a challenge as to whats the best place to hear the music and how to present it. I think thats a positive trend that's happening. But it's a change. And as with any change, it can be uncomfortable for people participating in the change. But thats something that's never existed in jazz before, that kind of consistency. Jazz at Lincoln Center is in the midst of a huge project to build a home for jazz. We can only just hope that that's incredibly successful, and do everything we can to make sure its successful. Because that's what's going to help ensure, along with the creativity of the musicians performing, that jazz will flourish.
AAJ: Are you getting any bounce out of the Ken Burns documentary? And what did you think of that documentary?
RK: I thought the documentary was a very well done documentary. Im of two complete minds. I can go along with the legions of hard-core jazz fans who hate it in that it left out lots. And it did lead out leave out lots, and I have plenty of bones to pick with what was left out. However, as piece of work its brilliant, it's a great documentary. It is by no means comprehensive, I don't think that was its intention. It does present a point of view, and I think that's a good thing whether I agree or disagree with the point of view. Theres something to react to. One of the great things about the documentary is the dialogue thats following it.
But for people I know that arent particularly jazz literate, I have heard nothing but praise. And that's a great thing. There are a couple of aspects about the documentary. It may not address particular agendas or particular points of view about jazz. But what it does is present a point of view that is going to at least wake up a number of people to look at jazz.
And one of the big criticisms is that it tends to look backwards. And that's being evidenced by record sales. There's a lot of catalog being purchased right now as a result of the Burns documentary, some huge numbers particularly for the Burns sets, unheard-of numbers in the jazz world as of late. And things like A Love Supreme that moved 6,000 units the week after it was featured on the Burns thing, a record that normally moves 600 a week. And long-term, that's great news for jazz because people are buying records, listening to records, they're getting familiar with it. And the bounce, to answer your question in a very long way, is a long-term bounce. And it's up to the jazz community to really take advantage of it.
The other big criticism is not taking care of contemporary jazz in the way it could have, the contemporary jazz that's being presented out there with us, with Yoshis and all the other organizations in the Bay Area, Jazz In Flight, the Stanford Jazz Workshop. And it's all our jobs right now to help teach people about what's happening right now and help try to bring audiences out for that.
But we've all been given a great gift with the Ken Burns thing. It just plunked down in our laps, and all of a sudden there are people talking about jazz that never talked about jazz and who have an interest that may not have had an interest before. People that are interested in it, it may have helped deepen a little bit in some cases some peoples knowledge. And in some cases it may not have -- but those people weve already got in our pockets, those are the people that are already predisposed. And the Burns thing really hit a number of people that werent. Its a beautiful thing.
AAJ: What does the future hold for SFJAZZ?
RK: Who knows what's gonna go on here in the next few years. We're in the midst of a strategic planning process, the organization and our board of directors right now. And we're talking about a lot of different exciting things right now. Things that may be doable.
AAJ: Can you share any?
RK: Nothing I could quite share with you right now.
AAJ: What about recording?
RK: Weve recorded a few things over the years, not too much. But things like that we're constantly assessing. We're looking at some things that will help move us towards a more institutional status in the best sense of the word. We are trying to find ways, as I said earlier, that were gonna be around here for a time to come.
