JazzArt® at the Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center

by Iven Lourie

This was a great day, the opening of Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center, Yoshi's SF Jazz Club and Japanese Restaurant! Unlike the Grand Opening a few nights before, with hundreds of invited guests, evening gowns, klieg lights, greeting geishas, acres of hors d'oeuvres at Yoshi's (see See James Rodney's great photos) -- this was the community opening, where everyone in town was invited. Well, the restaurant wasn't ready yet, but the Club was swinging, there were JazzArt panels and even mural-sized canvases on the walls, in the entryway, on free standing kiosks (like painting sculptures...), and lining the walls of the Lush Life Art Gallery, just adjacent, at 1320 Fillmore Street. More photos.

Sooo...this is the rebirth of the cool in the historic Fillmore District of San Francisco!!!! People are milling about the entrance of this soaring new building. In the atrium are these terrific paintings, vibrant and jumping with colors, on black canvases sometimes fluorescent looking, these horn players and bassists, sax virtuosos and drummers painted with verve and improvisationally by E.J. Gold, a master of this medium and a musician himself. From Zoe Alowan and Kelly Rivera there are life-size portraits of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday in their heyday-true jazz royalty! There are some abstracted instruments by S.L. Boyd and a triptych high on one wall by Douglass-Truth that invokes the jazz landscape of N.Y. City, with its elevated tracks, neons, rickety streetlights, and flickering club windows. This is an altogether rich and beautifully aesthetic environment for the opening of a new jazz club and cultural center.

It was Saturday, December 1st, and we drove the three hours or so from Nevada County down through the Valley and the North Bay communities, cross the Bay Bridge, and cross town into the heart of the music district traditionally in SF-The Fillmore! Anyone out there remember those '60's and '70's dance concerts, the Fillmore Ballroom and the Winterland, Santana, Jefferson Airplane, and all that rock 'n roll? OK, how about jazz in the clubs, the bars around the Fillmore, the Mission, North Beach, Noe Valley -- jazz men and poets working together, as with Al Young the Poet Laureate of California presently and a great literary writer about jazz, in the spirit of jazz, record jackets and like that, liner notes ....

The new building is very striking, contemporary and with high architectural design qualities -- as a journalist wrote -- the new "Cathedral of Jazz" in San Francisco. This project is a new millennium one -- the event program states as follows:

The project includes 80 residential condos, a public parking garage, and 40,000 square feet of commercial space anchored by the new Yoshi's San Francisco. Additionally, the 1300 on Fillmore Restaurant and Lounge, and the non-profit Jazz Heritage Center complete this entertainment complex.

And further on:

The Jazz Heritage Center (JHC) promotes jazz as an American national treasure-inspiring youth with positive role models and energizing the redevelopment of this community. The JHC will operate the Lush Life Art Gallery, the Take Five Gift Shop, a screening room for entertainment and educational presentations, public lobby interactive kiosk, and public art panels featuring jazz icons.

In the spacious and plush lobby are some information tables for the condo project, the Fillmore Heritage Center, and some big guys dressed in dark suits pointing the way into Yoshi's where jazz music is happening. This is a generous space, with a 2 or 3 story high ceiling, small club tables and chairs in concentric rings from stage up in elevation to higher tiers against the curving back wall. The lighting is superb, the acoustics are hot, and the stage is really crisp and post-modern looking, like the upper of the upper echelons of jazz venues....

We catch a set in full momentum with Bobbie Webb and the Smooth Blues Band, a rollicking rendition of Bay Area blues. Webb belts out "Sweet Home Chicago" and "The Blues are All Right" and he gives a personal twist to more standards, very well done. He reminds me a lot of Bobby "Blue" Bland who I heard decades ago in Chicago, and the Smooth Blues Band lead guitarist sounds at turns like Albert King or Buddy Guy. Webb calls up guests to join him on the stage, notably ------------ (still seeking her name), a statuesque Oakland jazz singer, who gives us a sizzling "Stormy Monday," always a favorite of mine! The crowd is appreciative, everyone is nodding and foot tapping to this music.

Following Webb is the Cultural Heritage Choir, led by Linda Tillery, and these a capella singers are also terrific. They do traditional material, with some drums and percussion rhythm of their own, call and response, folksongs and hymns, a beautiful song from the Georgia Sea Islands (I didn't write down any song titles, unfortunately). Great set, brought the house down, so to speak, or lit it up.

We bounced back to the lounge and entry area, spoke with the painter Douglass-Truth and Bev K. who was instrumental in getting this JazzArt installation set up as part of the Grand Opening. In the Lush Life Gallery, Director Peter Fitzsimmons sweeps an arm around the room with pride, indicating the large group of canvases on the walls by E.J. Gold and other JazzArt painters. There are also bronze cast sculptures of jazz players by local sculptor Ed Dwight and a fabulous show of artist photos by SF photographers including performance photos going back to the '60's, people like Mingus and Paul Desmond and Miles Davis. What could be more appropriate for the Jazz Heritage Center than this show!

As Wynton Marsalis said when he played two concerts in my home town, Grass Valley, California, surrounded by paintings and banners and huge JazzArt backdrops by E.J. Gold and the Grass Valley Graphics Group with him on stage:

"This was beautiful. It made the space a whole lot more alive! Jazz, jazz themes, different styles; a feeling of community where everybody is coming together in a meaningful way. This is something that should happen more ...." (Art Matters, Spring, 2002)

And so it is! I chat briefly in the Gallery with the author of a Jazz History of San Francisco, Jim Templeton, who recommends a couple of other nearby venues that have played a role in Fillmore music history.

Altogether a great day, and though we did not stick around to hear Taj Mahal at Yoshi's that Saturday night (or Chick Corea the next Tuesday through Sunday, with Hubert Laws and others) we know we'll be coming back here to catch some great jazz at Yoshi's S.F. and soak up the art and atmosphere of the JHC and the Lush Life Gallery, where a one-man show of E.J. Gold's JazzArt paintings is coming up this October/November, 2008!