As an ambitious teenage trumpeter growing up on Chicago’s South Side in the early 1960s, Khalil Shaheed struggled to find mentors who could help him unlock the mysteries of modern jazz. Decades later, long after he’d established himself in the San Francisco Bay Area as a leading bebopper with an unusually broad array of musical interests and influences, Shaheed launched an organization conceived as the answer to his adolescent quest.
Celebrating its 30th anniversary at Yoshi’s in Oakland on Nov. 16 with a stellar cast of alumni, faculty, and supporters, Oaktown Jazz Workshops has shaped generations of young musicians by passing on jazz knowledge via old-school mentorship. While Shaheed died in 2012 at the age of 63, the crucial educational organization he founded in 1994 still carries his conceptual DNA, and the results speak for themselves.
Berkeley pianist, flutist, and composer Erika Oba started attending the workshops around the age of 11 with her older sister, esteemed Los Angeles-based saxophonist and composer Hitomi Oba. With no previous exposure to jazz, Erika Oba jumped in, “and right from the get-go, they were having everyone improvise and compose,” she recalled. “Khalil was so kind, generous, and encouraging. And he had a rule: If you were in Oaktown for more than a few months, you had to start writing.”
She’s never stopped. Oba has become one of the Bay Area’s most sought-after young composers, writing scores for theater (Shotgun Players’ spring production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and cultural events (the inaugural edition of the Nippon Kobo festival at Fort Mason). In June, she celebrated the release of Ghosts on the Water, her consistently enthralling new album featuring drummer Jeremy Steinkoler and bassist Christ Bastian, at the OJW space on Jack London Square, and she’s scheduled to play two shows with her trio on Nov. 22 at Mr. Tipple’s.
Oba credits the workshops’ high expectations with fueling her creative growth. “I’ve been in a lot of jazz educational environments, and [OJW] has the best model,” she said. “There’s such a high ratio of professional musicians to students. That’s how you get better. In so many programs, you’re playing with people in your age group who are at about the same level. But at Oaktown, even in sixth grade, you play with professional gigging musicians.”
At Yoshi’s on Saturday, Oba is performing in a combo led by saxophonist Richard Howell, a longtime Oaktown faculty member and powerhouse improviser who played with Shaheed in the groundbreaking North Africa-meets-jazz Mo’Rockin Project. The saxophonist is also joined by his son, thriving New York drummer Elé Howell, who’s performed widely around the Bay Area with tenor sax star Ravi Coltrane and New Orleans trumpeter Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah (aka Christian Scott).
Like Oba, the younger Howell was profoundly shaped by his formative experiences at Oaktown, studying drums with veteran accompanists Jack Dorsey and Sly Randolph and piano and composition with multi-instrumentalist Art Khu, who encouraged Howell to develop his writing skills and provided recording opportunities for him as a young teen. “I was very fortunate to study with these masterful musicians,” Howell said.
Saturday’s sprawling celebration — hosted by jazz radio station KCSM’s program and music director, Jesse “Chuy” Varela — also includes performances by the John Santos Sextet (joined by saxophonists and OJW alumni Kazemde George and Jesse Levit), the Oaktown Jazz Workshops’ Performance Ensemble, and special guests like drummer Jayla Hernández.
The Brooklyn-based George “is getting a lot of gigs and making things happen,” said bassist Ravi Abcarian, who’s run OJW since Shaheed’s death. George returns to Black Cat for a three-night run Nov. 29 – Dec. 1, co-leading a quintet with his wife and creative partner, Sami Stevens, on piano and vocals and Elé Howell on drums.
“He always makes a point of joining us for the workshops,” Abcarian said about George. “And Jesse [Levit] is one of the top saxophonists in the Bay Area. I met him his first day at the workshops when he was 12, and [drum great] Achyutan Pattillo gave him the nickname ‘the Levitator,’ which stuck with him.”
OJW has been based in Jack London Square since 2011, in a space formerly home to a Tony Roma’s. But in its early years, the program toggled between two Oakland facilities, Dimond Recreation Center and the Alice Arts Center (now known as the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts). “We had these beat-up pianos, and Khalil would bring a bag full of music books and stands every day because there was nowhere to store our stuff,” said Abcarian. “Thanks to the Port of Oakland, we [now] have a full library of music and all the instruments. Family and friends can wait in the space while the kids are in rehearsals.”
Beyond the 70 students enrolled in the after-school workshops, OJW provides classes in Oakland schools and presents regular performances in local libraries — “a great way to reach community members who don’t have an opportunity to see live music,” Abcarian said. The core workshops programming, which runs year-round, emphasizes jazz as a community-based art form. The library gigs and other events around the East Bay provide opportunities for the young musicians to gain poise and polish as performers.
“It’s training the young musicians and giving them the tools they’ll need when they’re adults and getting their feet wet,” Abcarian said. “They come back and say, ‘When I went to New York, I was so far ahead of my peers.’ They show up on time [and] know the dress attire and dynamics of each performance, where sometimes you’re playing onstage to a crowd and the next day you’re playing background music at a cocktail party.”
It’ll be music in the foreground at Yoshi’s, where OJW’s vibrant legacy will launch into a fourth decade.
