After four decades of working quietly in the wilds of La Honda and the public schools of Oakland, Living Jazz is ready to celebrate in public.
Since its founding in 1984, the nonprofit organization has played an essential role nurturing the Bay Area music scene with an array of educational programs and an annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day concert called “In the Name of Love.” But few people outside the organization have a sense of its far-reaching impact.
Lyz Luke, Living Jazz’s executive director, is determined to change that, starting with “Inextinguishable Oakland,” a concert in collaboration with the Oakland Symphony, scheduled for Friday, Oct. 18, at Paramount Theatre.
“We’ve got 40 years of history, but a lot of what we do is so insular, like Jazz Camp West at La Honda,” said Luke, whose extensive experience in the arts includes leading the singular, now-shuttered Bay Area production company UnderCover Presents.
“People often think our MLK tribute is presented by the city of Oakland. This is the launch of Living Jazz’s public-facing era, where we’re giving our artists the opportunity to present original works on a larger platform.”
The timing is impeccable, as “Inextinguishable Oakland” is also the inaugural flight of Kedrick Armstrong, the Oakland Symphony’s newly appointed music director. Stepping into a role defined by the late, beloved conductor Michael Morgan, the 30-year-old Armstrong, who relocated from South Carolina to Oakland earlier this year, has embraced the event as his own.
“The concert was already on the docket coming into the position, and they gave me the choice to reshape it,” he said. “But this opportunity to work with musicians who might not have ever written for an orchestra before, authentically representing their culture and music — this absolutely fits what I love to do.”
The concert is slated to feature three commissioned pieces by artists with varying ties to Living Jazz. San Francisco singer-songwriter Meklit, fresh off the triumphant debut of her Movement Immigrant Orchestra at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, plans to present a medley of three original Ethio-jazz-influenced songs. The Ethiopian American artist participated in the 2021 online iteration of “In the Name of Love,” accompanied by the Kronos Quartet — “But this is her first live performance with Living Jazz,” Luke noted.
New York-based drummer and composer Allison Miller was a longtime faculty member at Jazz Camp West before she was appointed artistic director of the program in 2018. She has composed Valley of the Giants (for Eddie Marshall), a tribute to the late San Francisco drum maestro, who was also a mainstay at Jazz Camp West. Arranged and orchestrated by Todd Sickafoose, who won a Tony Award and a Grammy for his work on the hit Broadway musical Hadestown, Miller’s piece is expected to see East Bay-reared tenor saxophone star Dayna Stephens guesting with the Oakland Symphony.
Oakland percussionist John Santos rounds out the triumvirate of commissioned artists, and in many ways, he best embodies how Living Jazz has nourished the Bay Area music scene. On the Jazz Camp West faculty since 1986, he’s forged deep bonds with countless musicians over the summer sessions, relationships that have often manifested on local stages.
Noting that now-independent organizations like the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir and Oakland Jazz Choir started as Living Jazz programs, Santos said it’s high time that the organization raised its profile in its own backyard.
“It is exciting that Lyz brings this new energy, revitalizing something that’s already vital,” he said. “I’ve been teaching at Jazz Camp West almost since the beginning, and it’s hard to explain the amazing environment there. You’ve got to be there to experience it, and now we’re bringing some of that energy to Oakland.”
Working with bassist Saul Sierra as an arranger, Santos, a seven-time Grammy nominee, has composed Un Levantamiento (An Uprising), a suite based on traditional Puerto Rican forms like danza, plena, and aguinaldo. As the title implies, the piece is an “ode to the resilience of Puerto Ricans who’ve resisted colonial oppression for over 500 years,” Santos explained.
Since first emerging on the Bay Area music scene in the mid-1970s, Santos has created a vast body of work encompassing rhythms and idioms from across the Caribbean. But Un Levantamiento is his first piece for symphony orchestra. The suite is set to feature Maria Cora, who was the lead vocalist for the all-woman Bay Area salsa band Azúcar Con Aché, as well as Pedro José Pastrana on the guitar-like Puerto Rican cuatro.
The collaboration between Living Jazz and the Oakland Symphony was struck at a now-closed diner in West Oakland named Pretty Lady, where Luke already had some history with the ensemble. Back when she worked as creative consultant for the orchestra, she would “talk with Michael Morgan quite a bit about programming and how to bring in local artists,” she recalled.
“We’d always meet at this blue-collar greasy spoon joint. When Michael mentioned he wanted to do something with the orchestra and jazz, the timing was perfect for Living Jazz’s 40th anniversary. This program really fits the way Living Jazz is trying to be more expansive about what jazz is.”
It’s a vision that unites two organizations in the midst of generational leadership change, and it’s looking to be the beginning of a promising relationship.
This story was first published in Datebook in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle.
