A minor change in the schedule format of the annual three-day San Diego Jazz Party in late February resulted in a slight attendance increase for 2025 over 2024.
According to SDJP Board president Russell King, “We felt that the traditional jazz party model had been outmoded. We wanted to take a broader approach in meeting our mission, which is to present live music to a live audience. By offering our Friday and Saturday programs as separate packages in addition to the usual three-day patron package, we were able to attract a younger and overall larger audience as well as increase financial support from donors and grants.
“For over 35 years, the San Diego Jazz Party has presented some of the world’s best jazz musicians. Each year we make slight adjustments to the Party with the intention of growing our audience. Based on the sold-out success of the 2024 ‘Taste of Jazz’ on Saturday night, we added our ‘Swingin’ Sinatra Style’ on Friday night as four-hours of great jazz that could be purchased independently.”
February 20-22 are the dates for the 2026 San Diego Jazz Party at the Hilton San Diego/Del Mar, and trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso will be honored as the 2026 Jazz Legend. Russell King made note that “part of our mission is to host Master Classes in local schools, and to provide college scholarships for young musicians studying jazz in their college or university.”
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
Nathan Tokunaga, the promising teenage reed player from California, will continue his education at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City! In thanking everyone who has supported him throughout his musical journey, he said, “I am incredibly grateful to The New School for giving me such a generous scholarship and the opportunity to study in New York, which is a huge dream come true.”
Nathan, who aspires to become a professional jazz musician, plays the clarinet, soprano sax, tenor sax, and alto sax and has performed as a sideman or leader at some 400 concerts and musical events in the Bay Area over the past decade.
Jazz blogger Michael Steinman pointed out that “Nathan has quickly showed himself an adult in every conceivable way except the number on his birth certificate.” New Orleans pianist Steve Pistorius commented, “I’ve been doing this for almost 50 years professionally, and I’ve seldom heard the depth of understanding of New Orleans jazz as I’ve heard coming out of the horn played by this young man.”
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
Rossano Sportiello started his weekly “Live at the Flat in Greenwich Village” programs on YouTube in 2020 during the Pandemic. Over the past five years he has hosted 128 episodes that have included 70 guest musicians. Ken Peplowski who has been battling multiple myeloma cancer reports that his latest tests show he has been cancer-free for the past three months.
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
Scott Anthony, known to jazz fans as the banjo-playing leader of the Golden Gate Rhythm Machine and the guitarist in Bob Schultz’s Frisco Jazz Band, has reluctantly decided to “hang it up” and retire after more than 65 years playing music. In a recent Facebook posting, he sadly indicated that “a debilitating tremor I have developed has been progressing over a couple of years, which coupled with extreme fatigue on my strumming arm, has made it impossible to get through even a few tunes without having to stop to rest.”
Born in Summit, New Jersey, Scott began playing the banjo at age 11 and appeared on Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour in 1962. He was a member of the Dartmouth 5 while attending Dartmouth College in New Hampshire before attending graduate school where he studied Ecology and Evolution.
Scott moved to San Francisco in 1974 with no money, no job and a 140-pound Newfoundland dog. He soon found work and for almost two years played solo banjo, pedal-bass, drum machine, and vocal five-nights-a-week at an upscale restaurant. He accidentally heard about an opening for an intermission spot at Turk Murphy’s club, Earthquake McGoon’s, and held that job for eight years before McGoon’s on Pier 39 in San Francisco closed. He has since made a living as a musician, part-time computer consultant-programmer and builder of custom guitars. He has also had a 40-year career as an artist in oil, watercolors, and acrylic, winning numerous awards and having his paintings displayed in over 3,000 corporate and private collections.
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
Mention of Earthquake McGoon’s in the previous item brings back memories of the longest-running traditional jazz club in San Francisco that operated from 1960 to 1984 and featured Turk Murphy’s San Francisco Jazz Band. Originally located at 99 Broadway, the Club was named after a character in Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip. Capp gave Murphy permission to use the name “as long as you keep your nose clean and play good jazz.” The space was leased by Turk in partnership with his longtime pianist Pete Clute.
In 1962, McGoon’s moved to what was probably the best-known of its four locations: 630 Clay Street. The Club became a magnet for celebrities like Walter Cronkite, Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood, and John Chancellor who often might be seen in the crowd. McGoon’s on Clay Street closed in 1978 when the block in which it was located was sold for redevelopment as an office building.
The band found temporary quarters (1978-1983) at the Rathskeller (128 The Embarcadero) before moving to its final location: Pier 39. The band and club received a boost when See’s Candies began broadcasting live on popular radio station KJAZ, ensuring that jazz fans knew the San Francisco Style was alive and well in new surroundings. Unfortunately, financial irregularities surfaced, and the Murphy-Clute partnership was dissolved amidst a flurry of lawsuits and countersuits. The band managed to hang on until 1984 when Earthquake McGoon’s closed for good. The Turk Murphy aggregation moved up to Nob Hill and the glitzy New Orleans Room in the Fairmont Hotel.
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫
The MIM, the world’s only global musical instrument museum and the largest of its type, recently observed significant milestones in the 15 years that 3,450,000 guests from all 50 states and 125 countries have enjoyed its galleries and programs.
The MIM began with a vision to create a musical instrument museum that would be truly global. Realizing most musical museums featured historic, primarily Western classical instruments, MIM’s founder Bob Ulrich (then CEO of Target Corporation) was inspired to develop a new kind of museum that would focus on the kind of instruments played every day by people worldwide.
Located in Phoenix, Arzona, The MIM has a collection of more than 13,600 instruments and objects from every country in the world (of which 6,800 are on display). The galleries reflect the rich diversity and history of many world cultures and offer audio and visual evidence that is expressed in the Museum’s motto; Music is the language of the soul.
The contemporary building located at 4725 East Mayo Boulevard (on the corner of Tatum and Mayo, just south of Loop 101) in North Phoenix was built at a cost of $250 million and covers 200,000 square feet with two floors of galleries. The main galleries are on the second level and are divided into five global regions: Africa and the Middle East – Asia and Oceania – Europe – Latin America – United States/Canada, plus the Collier STEM Gallery where guests may experience “how science brings music to life.”
Jazz Well-Represented
Exhibits of instruments associated with jazz musicians are prominently featured in the USA/Canada gallery. A recent acquisition is the Pannonica piano, a 1956 Steinway Model M owned by jazz patron Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter and played by Thelonious Monk and countless jazz greats. A jazz all-stars display may include Buddy Rich’s drum set, Freddie Green’s guitar, Bobby Hackett’s trumpet, Lionel Hampton’s vibraharp, Gerry Mulligan baritone saxophone, the drums and guitar played by Madonna in the early years of her career, and guitars associated with Les Paul, George Benson, Dick Dale, Paul Simon, and Eric Clapton. The piano on which John Lennon composed Imagine has been displayed in the Artists Gallery as has the piano on which Fats Waller recorded hand-played piano rolls.
The Musical Instrument Museum is a Smithsonian affiliate, is the #1 tourist attraction in Phoenix and is open seven days a week. The average visit time is 3.5 hours. There is a modest admission charge, but well worth it. Wireless headsets and video allow visitors to hear and see the instruments as they would be played in their native lands. Since opening in 2010, its extensive educational programs have brought more than 620,000 school and youth field trip participants to the Museum for tours and performances by artists-in-residence, Last year, over 91,000 guests attended 326 concerts in the MIM Music Theater, called by a Grammy winner “the best 300-seat venue in the country.”
As one visitor wrote, “My daughter likes The MIM better than Disneyland. . . Hands down!”
Lew Shaw started writing about music as the publicist for the famous Berkshire Music Barn in the 1960s. He joined the West Coast Rag in 1989 and has been a guiding light to this paper through the two name changes since then as we grew to become The Syncopated Times. 47 of his profiles of today's top musicians are collected in Jazz Beat: Notes on Classic Jazz.Volume two, Jazz Beat Encore: More Notes on Classic Jazz contains 43 more! Lew taps his extensive network of connections and friends throughout the traditional jazz world to bring us his Jazz Jottings column every month.
