News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
ONE DAY AFTER merchant leaders announced the 2025 Fillmore Jazz Festival was being canceled, a sponsor stepped forward to say he would fund this year’s festival. After feverish scrambling over the weekend to put together a budget, the president of the Fillmore Merchants Association announced this morning that the festival will happen after all, as…
By CYNTHIA TRAINA The Fillmore Jazz Festival, traditionally held over the Fourth of July weekend, has been canceled for 2025. Tim Omi, president of the sponsoring Fillmore Merchants Association, announced the cancellation tonight at a neighborhood meeting. The festival, which has attracted more than 100,000 attendees annually to what was billed as the largest free…
SAN FRANCISCO’S ICONIC Fillmore Jazz Festival returns for its 35th year on July 6 and 7, promising a vibrant weekend of music, arts and community spirit. Spanning Fillmore Street from Jackson to Eddy, this year’s festival is back at full strength, presenting an impressive lineup across five stages and showcasing the talents of 25 local…
FOR THE FIRST TIME in decades, there will be no jazz on Fillmore Street this Fourth of July weekend. The annual Fillmore Jazz Festival has been canceled due to the coronavirus and the ban on large gatherings of people. “Sister! I just want to cry because there’s no festival this weekend,” said jazz vocalist Kim…
By JASON OLAINE Artistic Director, Fillmore Jazz Festival What is the sound of jazz? And can jazz mean different things to different people, perhaps even different things to the same person? Since its birth in New Orleans near the end of the 19th century, jazz was a hybrid: a mixed-up, beautiful child of Africa, Europe,…
Q & A | KIM NALLEY Jazz diva Kim Nalley and her band return as headliners at the Fillmore Jazz Festival again this year, appearing on Saturday, June 30, at 4:30 p.m. on the California Street stage. It all started for you on Fillmore Street, right? Yes. I was cleaning houses and I got a…
By JASON OLAINE Artistic Director, Fillmore Jazz Festival Throwback is a term usually used in a positive way to refer to a bygone era that conjured great memories, which is what this year’s Fillmore Jazz Festival means to conjure up — positive memories of a time when all seemed right with the world: the mid-1990s.…
Q & A | JASON OLAINE Jason Olaine returns to San Francisco to book the Fillmore Jazz Festival when he’s not booking Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. You’re throwing us back this year to the 1990s — where were you back then? Well, 1993 was really the beginning of what would be my…
Q & A | MICHAEL SCHWAB The poster for the 2018 Fillmore Jazz Festival is the fourth jazz image Michael Schwab has created for the Fillmore festival. All four now hang as banners on the street. Are you a jazz fan? Sure. I’m not an aficionado, but as a kid, back in southern Oklahoma, I…
By KEITH HOWELL Rhonel Roberts’ first love was music. But painting is his passion. The two came together for the Fillmore resident in a series of artworks he created celebrating great jazz musicians — Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles and South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela. His career took off when…