The New Fillmore

Jason Olaine programs Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Fillmore Jazz Festival.

Q & A | JASON OLAINE

Last year you left Yoshi’s on Fillmore to join Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. How’s the new gig going?

The job is great — challenging and rewarding. Maybe that’s why it’s great. We just wrapped our 25th anniversary season and it was a home run, so there is some satisfaction, and relief.

What’s your role?

I’m the director of programming and touring at Jazz at Lincoln Center, so I’m responsible for all the programming we generate. Our concert season runs from September through June in our two main halls — the 450-seat Allen Room and the 1,100-seat Rose Theatre, located in the Frederick P. Rose Hall at Columbus Circle in midtown Manhattan.

We also have an amazing jazz club — Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola — that is open seven nights a week, two shows a night, much like Yoshi’s, except we only have 125 seats. We have a similar club in the Middle East — in Doha, Qatar — that opened in October of 2012 and we will be opening a club in Shanghai in late 2016 or early 2017.

Our Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis tours approximately 12 weeks a year — they’re in Europe right now. We have tours slated from now through 2016, including trips to South America, Asia, Australia, the U.K. and here at home, plus we program a series in Mexico City. We’re putting a lot of musicians to work and spreading jazz to the masses.

What does it tell you about the state of jazz?

There are more people “consuming” jazz — buying tickets, attending free festivals like this one, downloading, streaming, sharing, buying, viewing on demand — than at any other time in history. Has the economy fully recovered here and abroad? Not by a long shot. So we feel that given how strong the jazz economy is now, the future looks even brighter. At Lincoln Center, we sold more tickets this year than any year before and had more than 100,000 people watching our live streams. And sales for next season are tracking 15 percent ahead of this year.

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IT’S THAT TIME of year again — Fourth of July weekend — and the Fillmore Jazz Festival is back and will take over the street for the 29th year in a row.

With more than 100,000 people expected for the two-day street party, the Fillmore Jazz Festival means different things to different people. For artists, it’s an opportunity to present new material or play old favorites for hundreds or thousands of people. For many residents and festival goers, it’s a weekend to look forward to every year — a time to celebrate the best of the neighborhood’s past and present. There’s a positive, joyous vibe up and down Fillmore Street as live music flows from block to block.

This year’s lineup on the California and Sutter stages covers a lot of ground, stylistically and geographically. While both of this year’s Artists-in-Residence hail from the Bay Area, the rest of the lineup stretches from Vegas to Brooklyn to Israel and Ghana.

The Jazz Artist-in-Residence, Kim Nalley, is an acclaimed jazz and blues vocalist and a true San Francisco treasure who got her start on Fillmore and has become a fixture at the festival. She wows the crowds and stops traffic — sometimes literally — with her dynamic stage shows. An inspiring and dedicated educator as well, Nalley has a gift for storytelling — and swinging hard. She recently sold out all four shows at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York and returns at the end of July for a week of shows at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, presenting her tribute to Billie Holliday.

World music and jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist Peter Apfelbaum — this year’s World Music Artist-in-Residence, grew up in Berkeley, although he has been living in Brooklyn for a couple of decades. Apfelbaum makes his Fillmore Jazz Festival debut as a leader this year. But he’s been leading bands, including his groundbreaking, genre-defying Hieroglyphics Ensemble, since he was a highschooler back in the late ’70s. His music has always been fascinating — was it jazz, world music, groove or funk? For this world-class, Grammy-nominated composer and improviser, no label is required — or maybe even possible.

Both Artists-in-Residence perform both days, and present two completely different shows — a real treat if you’re a fan or just curious why they’re in the spotlight. They both deserve the attention — as do the other artists invited to perform. If music is an important part of your life and you like discovering new music — be it jazz or world or blues and beyond — then this year’s Fillmore Jazz Festival is for you.

Complete schedule of entertainment

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Jai Uttal is world music artist in residence at the Fillmore Jazz Festival.

THE LINEUP | Jason Olaine

It’s that time of year again, when San Francisco’s swingingest, bluesiest and funkiest street party comes alive. The 2012 Fillmore Jazz Festival is July 7 and 8.

This is the 28th year of the festival, which was created in 1984 to celebrate Fillmore’s jazz heritage at a time when much of the music had stopped. I had the honor of programming the music on the Sutter and California Street stages again this year and I can honestly say: If you had fun and were turned on by the eclectic and energetic music last year, then you’ll surely want to get to the Fillmore early this year. We have some amazing talent lined up. [Schedule of entertainment]

And if the diversity of music isn’t enough to get you up and out, the myriad food and arts vendors and the participating restaurants and merchants up and down the strip should be. The more than 200,000 people who attended last year can’t be wrong.

For the second year in a row we have both an artist-in-residence for the California Street stage (a jazz artist) and the Sutter Street stage (a world music artist), both of whom will be performing Saturday and Sunday.
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