Since it got started in the 1980s, the San Francisco Jazz Festival has been an out-of-the-box event. During its first decade, it presented genuine icons (Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson) and brand new talents (e.g. the young Joshua Redman); avant-gardists (like saxophonist Anthony Braxton) and beboppers (saxophonist Mel Martin); along with charanga bands, string quartets, bluegrass groups, Indian percussionists, gospel choirs, stride pianists, and tap dancers.
It was never your purist’s jazz festival. It chose to encourage a spirit of discovery in its audiences.
It’s still doing it.
Cory Henry at SFJAZZ, 9/23/18 (photo by Scott Chernis)
True to form, the 41st Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival (June 5-16) includes icons (NEA Jazz Masters Gary Bartz and Kenny Garrett) and new talents (e.g. vibraphonist Nikara Warren). It offers innovative funk (Cory Henry, Ivan Neville), Latin jazz (percussionist John Santos), flamenco jazz (pianist Chano Domínguez), and an array of singers (Jane Monheit, René Marie, La Doña). It also includes the U.S. premiere of an extended composition by the late Oscar Peterson, “The AFRICA Suite,” featuring the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, pianists Benny Green, Kenny Barron, and Gerald Clayton, guitarist Russell Malone, and actor Delroy Lindo, the evening’s host.
But perhaps more than anything, this year’s festival is a showcase for saxophonists.
From Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young to Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, the music has been carried forward by the innovations of saxophonists. And the San Francisco Jazz Festival — and, more generally, SFJAZZ — has also ridden on the shoulders of dozens of groundbreaking saxophonists: Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Pharoah Sanders, Gerry Mulligan, David Murray, Wayne Shorter, Charles Lloyd, Archie Shepp, Michael Brecker, Branford Marsalis, Ravi Coltrane, and so many others. What would the festival have been without them?
This year’s festival spotlights half a dozen saxophonists who carry the torch. They include the afore-mentioned Bartz and Garrett, who came up under the spell of Parker and Coltrane and were inspired to create their own brilliant and unique sounds. They are beloved musicians who continue to excite and innovate. The festival also spotlights more recent arrivals to the scene. They traverse an array of styles, they are uniquely expressive, and they are pushing the music ahead.
Lakecia Benjamin and James Brandon Lewis (June 7)
Don’t miss this double bill. These two breakthrough artists convey much of what’s happening on the New York scene right now.
Alto saxophonist Benjamin has a piercing, blues-hued sound. Careening with energy, her solos draw from the well of John Coltrane. (One of her first employers was Coltrane’s drummer Rashied Ali, and her 2020 album Pursuance: The Coltranes was dedicated to John and Alice.) However, she’s no Coltrane clone. Benjamin grew up listening to all kinds of music — hip-hop, R&B, gospel, merengue — in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood, and you can hear the impact in her dancing approach to sound. Her 2023 album Phoenix is thoughtfully titled; Benjamin has fully bounced back from a serious car accident in 2021 and her music seeks to lift people up. Her band, performing at SFJAZZ, is called the Phoenix Quintet.
Lewis is among the most heralded musicians of the past decade. Sonny Rollins is a major fan, citing Lewis as one of the contemporary saxophonists he most admires. A serious student of the tradition, Lewis is also an explorer — an accessible one, ready to juggle rhythm sections, instrumentation, and compositional concepts. His 2020 album Jessup’s Wagon, which landed on dozens of year-end “best” lists, was inspired by the inventor and scientist George Washington Carver. His 2023 recording For Mahalia, With Love, is a tribute to Mahalia Jackson that delivers raw gospel power while alluding to the folk-driven avant-garde of Albert Ayler. Regardless of band or concept, Lewis fortifies every note — like Rollins — with clarity and a broad earthy tone. His music vibrates, grooves, and often achieves a punk-like energy. (Listen to his 2024 album with the Messthetics on Impulse! Records.) At SFJAZZ, Lewis performs with a trio featuring bassist Josh Werner and drummer Chad Taylor, ready to deliver.
Gary Bartz at SFJAZZ
Gary Bartz (June 9)
One of the most astonishing instrumentalists of the last 60 years, Bartz embodies the world of Black American music. In the 1960s, he captured the spirit of John Coltrane — his intensity and beauty — and brought it to the alto saxophone. But he never sounded like Coltrane. A genre-defying innovator, he has his own language, a special approach. That’s why Art Blakey, Max Roach, McCoy Tyner, and Miles Davis (with whom Bartz played in front of 600,000 fans at the Isle of Wight) hired him for their bands. Whether playing an African-American spiritual like “Deep River” or a noir ballad like “Laura” or groundbreaking funk with his own NTU Troop (which will perform at SFJAZZ), Bartz is a virtuoso who always comes from the heart and never forgets the blues. A 2024 NEA Jazz Master, he creates music that grabs you. It’s no accident that his recordings have been sampled by A Tribe Called Quest and other seminal hip-hop acts. (It’s also no accident that Lakecia Benjamin regards him as one of her key mentors.)
Kenny Garrett (June 12)
Ever since he emerged on the national scene — in 1978, when he was 17 years old — Garrett has had a sound that sets him apart. It’s his fingerprint. You hear a handful of notes — gritty, incantatory, like a preacher — and you know who it is. A solo by Garrett is thrilling: punctuated like hip-hop and questing like Coltrane, it is a spiritual ascent. Art Blakey loved his sound and snapped him up for the Jazz Messengers. Miles Davis singled him out, as well, hiring Garrett to share the front line in his band for five years. Among the most influential saxophonists of recent decades, Garrett — a 2023 NEA Jazz Master — has turned his own groups into a university for new talents. They have showcased a who’s who of modern drummers, including Brian Blade, Chris Dave, and Ronald Bruner Jr., a whirlwind who will perform with Garrett at SFJAZZ.
Nicole Glover at SFJAZZ, 6/11/22 (photo by Rick Swig)
Nicole Glover (June 12, with the Ben Wolfe Quartet)
Over the past decade, she has become a mainstay of the New York scene, admired for her burnished tone and mastery of modern saxophone vocabulary. She swings. She is a member of the all-star collective ARTEMIS, which records for Blue Note Records. (Check out her feature on “Penelope,” the Wayne Shorter tune, on the band’s 2023 album In Real Time.) A member of bassist Christian McBride’s new quintet, Glover has also toured internationally with Wynton Marsalis’s Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. From tender ballads to up-tempo barnburners, she covers it all, staking out her spot in the tenor saxophone lineage. At SFJAZZ, she performs with a quartet led by bassist Wolfe, who has a knack for assembling terrific bands. In addition to Glover, this one features the great pianist Orrin Evans and ace drummer Aaron Kimmel.
Shabaka (June 13)
A decade ago, he was one of the formulators of London’s exploding jazz scene. His marathon tenor saxophone solos became drawing cards for festival crowds — young people, going a bit nuts as Shabaka performed with The Comet Is Coming, an aggressively punk-psychedelic electric trio; or Sons of Kemet, his best-known band, groove-driven with two drummers; and Shabaka and the Ancestors, his Afro-centric collaboration with South African musicians. Shabaka’s muscular tenor playing could be relentless, like jazz gone rave… But guess what? He’s given up the saxophone, at least for now, to focus on flutes. A famously disciplined musician, Shabaka took on a new challenge and has been quietly preparing to make the transition. Like rapper Andre 3000 (whose New Blue Sun flute album came out last year), Shabaka has landed in a serene, atmospheric place. At his SFJAZZ show, he will perform on an array of wooden flutes, and perhaps on clarinet, his first instrument, pushing toward new vistas.
The 41st San Francisco Jazz Festival runs from June 5 through June 16. Tickets and more information available here.
A staff writer at SFJAZZ, Richard Scheinin is a lifelong journalist. He was the San Jose Mercury News' classical music and jazz critic for more than a decade and has profiled scores of public figures, from Ike Turner to Tony La Russa and the Dalai Lama.