SFJAZZ’S COMMUNITY BAND
IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

April 28, 2017 | by Erin Putnam

Every now and then, a small musical moment becomes something much bigger; this was the case on Monday at a private SFJAZZ performance in Hayes Valley. Each Monday Night Band 12-week session features a free concert in the community before the ensemble’s final showcase (also free) at the SFJAZZ Center on May 15. These community performances ground the ensemble in our neighborhood, not only through creating access to live jazz, but also through the relationships they build between collaborating musicians, organizations, and audience members.

This spring’s community performance took place this week (April 24), when the entire ensemble volunteered through Bread & Roses at Walden House, a live-in rehabilitation facility with several San Francisco locations. The location that hosted the Monday Night Band is a beautiful 200 year old converted convent with a large chapel in the center, perfect for concerts. The show included several original compositions and arrangements, and featured tunes from Brian Blade to Cole Porter to Snarky Puppy.

There were 80-90 Walden residents in attendance, and they constituted possibly the most animated jazz audience you’ve ever heard. They were grooving in their seats, they were memorizing musicians’ names to call out their solos and cheer them on – some dozen even held their phones above their heads to film the show. Following the final encore of Tower of Power’s “What is Hip?,” residents flooded the stage to shake hands and take photos with their favorite band members; one resident gave a lucky trombone player his hat as a gift.

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