This show hit like a voltage spike to the sternum—disciplined chaos, loud purpose, no hedging.

The room was already on edge before a note. Three fans who’d driven down from Sacramento staked the front row and swore they’d “never seen anything like the drummer.” A DJ in the lobby leaned into lo-fi jazz as ticket holders lined up; late rush-hour traffic crawled outside; passersby pressed their faces against the windows. Inside, teenagers claimed the second and third rows. One hundred seats. Sold out. Air held tight, ready to snap.

The Hotplate banner matters here. A monthly home-field challenge: Bay Area players take a classic and turn up the heat, risking failure. Tonight’s canvas—Mwandishi.

It was the kind of Sunday afternoon that settles on a room like a benediction. Folks looked as if they’d come straight from church—pressed jackets, careful shoes, a woman down front wearing a black sweater stitched with the word “FAITH,” the letters bright with rhinestones that caught every glint of stage light. The musicians would add the rest.

The Joe Henderson Lab was full, the kind of sold-out where strangers sit shoulder to shoulder and the air sharpens with anticipation. It carried a small-room charge—as if we’d all agreed to listen harder. An hour is not a long time, yet this set unfolded like a compact short story: precise scenes, careful silences, a closing image that refuses to leave. Stella Heath entered in period dress, with white gardenias in her hair, an emblem and a promise, and her sextet matched the era with crisp, 1930s– 40s attire. The message was not costume drama. It was witness. Heath’s Billie Holiday Project aims to tell the truth about the songs and about the life that shaped them—history delivered without fuss, and music that lets the history speak back.

The room begins with absence—no band, no chatter—just a white gauze curtain hanging like a flag with no country. A looped rhythm creeps in from the edges, dry and sandy, like shoes on stone. Then the words land—Miles Davis on change, on refusing the safe—projected large enough to read and short enough to sting. “If anybody wants to keep creating, they have to be about change.”

Images of Miles flicker behind the text. Another line—“Don’t fear mistakes because there are none”—and then the curtain drops hard. On the riser: Mino Cinélu, grinning, ready. Sticks and hands hit metal and skin—sharp, then round, then sharp again—an opening statement and a demand. The message is simple: movement or nothing.

SFJAZZ’s digital director, Ross Eustis, started the evening with a brief welcome, highlighting more than 350 shows on the new season’s schedule. The crowd greeted the band with the kind of enthusiasm associated with Corey Henry’s tour reputation: participatory, spiritual, a revival without dogma. Henry mentioned The Funk Apostles hadn’t played together “in over a year.” Still, the exchanges suggested a sense of muscle memory in the band. People sang, people danced, and the call-and-response thread ran from start to finish.

Anthony Wilson chose a high-wire debut for his first time leading his own band at SFJAZZ: nine musicians packed onto the Joe Henderson Lab’s stage—roughly 20 by 12 feet—to open the 2025–26 season. The Nonet fit like a well-designed puzzle. More importantly, the sound breathed. The Lab’s acoustics let dense voicings bloom without smear, and the band used the intimacy to make orchestral ideas feel close and human.

The quartet—Taj Mahal on vocals and strings, Bill Rich on electric bass, Trinidadian drummer Tony D, and keyboardist Jim Pugh—moved with unforced assurance. Pugh shifted between Hammond B-3 and Roland, answering Taj’s phrases with greasy smears or spare fills as needed. Rich and Tony D kept a buoyant pocket that welcomed the island inflections threaded through the set…

Seven voices filled Miner Auditorium with the weight and punch of a full band—no guitars, no drum kit, no horns in sight. It was a packed house, and from the opening moments, the crowd responded to each reveal with whoops and standing applause. One woman punctuated multiple song intros with an emphatic “Yes! Yes!”—a fair summary of the room’s mood all night.

With its two glass walls—one facing busy Franklin Street—the Joe Henderson Lab at the SFJAZZ Center feels like an open studio. At 7 p.m., the sold-out David Binney Action Trio made the most of that intimacy: all 100 seats were filled with fans of electro-acoustic jazz blended with funk and rock, some holding LPs and CDs for signatures while passersby looked in. Heads began to nod as soon as drummer Louis Cole found a groove, and they hardly stopped…

Under the kaleidoscopic lights of Miner Auditorium, the Sun Ra Arkestra landed the first of their four-night “residency. Fifteen musicians—adorned in sequined robes, ornate headdresses, and Egyptian motifs—assembled amid drifting fog. With a single stomp, bandleader Knoel Scott launched the ensemble into the deep, propulsive pulse of “Astro Black,” setting the “Cosmic Space Jazz” theme for the evening

Miner Auditorium felt less like a concert hall and more like an open‑air workshop on July 28, when saxophonist and resident artistic director Ravi Coltrane invited the Bay Area to step onto the same stage where, moments earlier, he and his house band—pianist Sundra Mannin, bassist Gary Brown, and drummer Elé Howell—had been shaping Coltrane family repertoire into fresh clay.

Ravi Coltrane’s acoustic quartet, Coltraxx, took the stage at San Francisco’s Miner Auditorium on July 27 and wove a tapestry of sound that honored jazz’s lineage while boldly pushing its boundaries. The quartet—Coltrane on saxophones, David Virelles on piano, Dezron Douglas on bass, and Jonathan Blake on drums—opened the evening with Coltrane coaxing a single, crystalline saxophone note into the hushed room.

A luminary of contemporary jazz, Joshua Redman graced Gates Concert Hall last Friday with his stellar group featuring Paul Cornish (piano), Philip Norris (bass), Nazir Ebo (drums), and the outstanding vocalist Gabrielle Cavassa.

The 100-minute sold-out performance relied heavily on songs from Redman's 2023 Blue Note Records debut where are we.

Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night will keep Emmet Cohen fans from coming out to see him and his trio perform in concert. That was the case last Saturday night at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts. Bundled up to brave the impact of a recent snowstorm, concertgoers showed up well before the doors opened. Swaddled in puffy jackets, they knocked the snow off their boots as they entered the building, while valiant senior citizens, some with hiking sticks, were eager to take their seats.

It all beIn its cavalcade of top-flight performers giving their retro spin to songs that have a permanent residency in our brains, the Postmodern Jukebox (PMJ) concert is authentically one of a kind. At the risk of dating myself, imagine a hip Lawrence Welk Show line-up with tap dancing and throwback costumes, minus the champagne bubbles and accordionist Myron Floren, in front of a retro backdrop right out of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. gins with an idea.

On the last night of their 2023 "Bye, Bye, Baby" tour, The California Honeydrops gave a stellar performance at the grand Mission Ballroom last Friday. The only glitch in the show was the oddly placed opening act, the Sam Grisman Project, a tightly huddled quartet of acoustic bluegrass players, not the right choice for a packed and noisy crowd ready to dance, groove, and party to a hot horn band.

Flamenco fusion guitarist Jesse Cook had a rocky start to his tour of the Western States three weeks ago. "Yup! It finally got me. I thought I could avoid it, but almost four years after COVID arrived, it finally struck me down this past week," Cook told his social media followers. Coincidentally, the guitarist's latest release is titled Love in the Time of COVID.

Award-winning jazz guitarist and composer Pat Metheny embarked on a 51-venue, 29-state solo tour supporting his 2023 Dream Box recording. At Denver’s Paramount Theatre, loyal fans lined up early for the sold-out show, and it was elbow-to-elbow for the next two hours in the 1800-seat venue.

Last Saturday, jazz trumpet legend Herb Alpert accompanied Lani Hall, his wife of 50 years, for a sold-out show at the University of Denver's Newman Center, Gates Concert Hall. They've performed together since 2006. Their musical chemistry and shared love were fully displayed at this delightful concert, framed by a back screen showing Alpert's colorful abstract art and videos. "I love to play the horn at these concerts, paint, and sculpt, and I'm married to an angel—what more can I ask for?" declared Alpert. At 88, he's still touring and recording.

Supporting their latest collaboration album, SuperBlue: The Iridescent Spree (Edition Records, 2023), jazz icon Kurt Elling and guitar maestro Charlie Hunter offered a high-energy performance on October 8th at the Boulder Theater. The incredible duo's band featured Julius Rodriguezon keyboards and Marcus Finnie on drums. Elling and company delivered a crowd-pleasing 90-minute set filled with funky originals, innovative covers, and a few surprises.