#jazz

#jazz

Multiple successive generations received their introduction to jazz through a beloved if unlikely source: the holiday television specials featuring Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts characters. Bay Area-based jazz legend Vince Guaraldi composed and played the music for several of those animated features; among the most treasured is A Charlie Brown Christmas, first broadcast in 1965 (and every year since then). Guaraldi's eminently tuneful and accessible music turned kids onto jazz without their knowing what was happening.

The best country song about a city will forever be Waylon Jennings' " Luckenbach, Texas," but when Noelle started singing "Taos," her ode to the New Mexico town, I had to rearrange a mental list of runners-up. Every Gillian Welch fan has their favorite songs, and while she and cosmic-folk guitarist extraordinaire David Rawlings didn't play mine (" Wrecking Ball," a beautiful autobiography of life in 1980s Santa Cruz), their set at the Masonic still felt like a big, warm embrace.

Larry Vuckovich celebrates his 89th year on the eve of his birthday, which is December 8! He will be playing with his favorite guitarist, Kai Lyons. Larry and Kai have been regularly expanding their diverse and wide-ranging repertoire. Besides the great jazz classics of top composers, they will cover seldom heard standards, great Latin and Brazilian pieces, World Music gems, and as always funky, boogaloo blues selections.

I didn't aim the list to turn out this way, but four of the albums' leaders are women, and five (including three of those four) feature prominent female "sidemen." There's old and young, with the leaders' ages ranging from 38 (Sullivan Fortner) to 87 (Charles Lloyd), the rest widely spaced in between. Seven of the 10 albums were released by indie labels, four of them on labels that are also artist-owned (two on Pyroclastic, one each on Greenleaf and Yes).

Vocalist and songwriter Ren Geisick was the 2010 recipient of an Ella Fitzgerald Scholarship. That same year, Downbeat Magazine named her Outstanding Undergraduate Jazz Vocalist. Reisick completed her studies and released her debut album, Ren, Love Song in 2017. Her second album, The Place I Planned to Go was released in June 2025. But for this City Lights Theater show-celebrating its 11 th year-Reisick and her band get into the holiday spirit with an assortment of classic holiday music, blending traditional melodies with updated, contemporary arrangements that bring together jazz, Americana and blues.

Sleigh bells, make way for the saxophones. Tonight's annual Cool Yule concert at the Hammer Theatre will feature the San Jose State University Jazz Orchestra, along with members of the San Jose Jazz High School All-Stars, playing jazzy, swinging arrangements of holiday standards plus newer compositions. Conducting the musicians will be SJSUs Aaron Lington, a professor of music and himself a Grammy Award-winning baritone saxophonist.

If you want to get your hands on a physical copy of the intriguing new DC-music zine Jazz as Resistance, you could scope out local music venues, where copies will sporadically be available, and hope to get lucky. But the publication's editor, Giovanni Russonello, has a better idea: "The real answer is, write to us at the link on the site and volunteer to fold some for us. We'll send you a bunch so that you can be a part of it."

Born in Philadelphia but now based in the Bay Area, saxophonist Carl Schultz combines traditional jazz textures with a modern flair. With extensive experience both in small combos and big bands, Schultz played more than a thousand dates with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. His latest album under his own name, The Road to Trantor is set for a November 21 release.

Presented by San Jose Jazz, the Break Room is an all ages pop up venue where fans can see unique artists in a temporary setting for a show unlike any other.

I'm glad we're starting to look at historical figures through the lens of neurodivergence (Documentary explores whether JMW Turner may have been neurodivergent, 10 November). But why give JMW Turner the benefit of 21st-century advances in neuroscience and not afford the same courtesy to his mother, Mary, who was believed to have had a psychiatric disorder and would fly into a dangerous temper? This language could have come straight from the admission papers that got her committed to a mental asylum. Jill Metcalfe Bottens, Switzerland

This new series, "The Hang," promises to explore the music of exciting artists and examine the music that inspired them to take it up. The first show features one of the Bay's best and most versatile saxophonists, Howard Wiley, who incorporates elements of funk and a whole lotta soul into his playing. Wiley has toured or played with a plethora of artists like Miss Lauryn Hill, Christian McBride, and Sheila E.

At a 1976 concert featuring American saxophone superstar Stan Getz and Brazilian singer and guitarist João Gilberto, Getz welcomed his partner to the stage in a tone of voice that reveals just how gobsmacked he remained by his genius. "The most individual singer of our time, a true originator," he enthused. "His curious ability to sing warmly without a vibrato, his impeccable and inimitable rhythmic sense, his intimacy, all coupled to his wonderful guitar work, make him unique." If that sounds dry, Miles Davis put it so: "Gilberto could sound seductive reading aloud from the Wall Street Journal."

Becca Stevens is one of the premier jazz musicians working today, effortlessly blending jazz harmonies with indie pop hooks, resulting in a sound that's gripping, intimate, and sublime. Since founding the Becca Stevens Band in 2006, she has toured internationally and become a desirable collaborator. This has led to projects with David Crosby and Jacob Collier. Her impressive soundscapes have resulted in two Grammy nominations.

She's surrounded herself with mentors, paid dues as a side player in creatively challenging settings, and built up a reputation as a composer and bandleader with an ear for the stand-out younger players coming up just behind her. After several four-night residencies at Black Cat, the Tenderloin jazz spot that's turned into an early-warning system for heat-seeking young musicians, she's back in the Bay Area to make her SFJAZZ Center debut with two shows at the Joe Henderson Lab Sept. 20 and a Sept. 21 performance at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay.

The first song I fell in love with When I was seven and I started playing the trumpet, my mum would take me to the library. They just happened to have Afro by Dizzy Gillespie, and I fell in love with Con Alma, which Dizzy plays on the trumpet with so much soul that it feels like a voice. I remember thinking: Wow, this is something else.

Cyndi Lauper is coming to the Bay Area to say goodbye. And she'll do so during three highly anticipated stops on her Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Farewell Tour: Aug. 23 at Toyota Amphitheatre at Wheatland; Aug. 24 at Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain View; and Aug. 26 at Toyota Pavilion at Concord. The swan song trek has consisted of 60-plus shows in four continents since kicking off in Montreal in October.

The Art Lande Quartet has carved its unique place in modern jazz with its UnStandard approach, presenting familiar material in innovative ways.

Improvisation as a musical practice transcends mechanical routines, emphasizing coherence in musical articulations over mere recall of scales or fixed phrases, which leads to true artistic expression.

Knoel Scott's performance with Sun Ra's Arkestra exemplified dynamic leadership, as he constantly switched instruments and managed solos while engaging deeply with the audience.

Charmaine Lee uses her voice as a tool for expression, creating a unique musical language that incorporates elements reminiscent of experimental electronics and noise music.

Now in its 60th year, Summerfest brings an outstanding roster of jazz stars and emerging talents to Harlem's Grant's Tomb and Marcus Garvey Park for free musical performances.

The McFerrin name comes with a lot, and I think that that's incredible. It comes with a lot of Black American history, and I just want to carry that forward.