SAN DIEGO — From San Diego and Tijuana to Tangier, Morocco, jazz was celebrated here, there and nearly everywhere in 2024 as a vital means of artistic expression and creative liberation. Or, as expatriate Cuban Arturo Sandoval trumpeter told the Washington Post prior to becoming a Kennedy Center honoree earlier this month: “Jazz and freedom are synonyms.”

The ability of jazz to unify and transcend borders was reinforced by the October debut of the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival, which was headlined by Cindy Blackman Santana and the Nortec Jazz Experience. It drew thousands of people and returns in 2025 in expanded form.

“We are so proud to be a part of such a strong statement of diplomacy … that takes place in both the U.S. and Mexico,” said Mexico City-born singer Magos Herrera during her festival-opening performance with her multinational band.

On April 30, the 12th annual United Nations-sponsored International Jazz Day All Star Global concert was held in the Moroccan city of Tangier. Led by Herbie Hancock — whose April 18 San Diego performance with his band at the Balboa Theatre was a highlight of the year here — the lineup for the Tangier concert also included musicians from around he world. They included Oceanside-based vocal dynamo Shemekia Copeland, who last month earned three 2025 Grammy Award nominations.

Copeland will do a sold-out Jan. 11 show at Humphreys Backstage Live as part of the venue’s Gourmet Blues Concert Series, which in November celebrated its first anniversary. November also saw the welcome return of the San Diego Symphony’s Jazz at the Jacobs series after a four-year hiatus that was prompted by the pandemic-fueled closure and subsequent extensive redesign of the orchestra’s downtown concert hall.

A tribute to Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan on Nov. 29 drew a sold-out audience to Jacobs Music Center, whose jazz series has been expertly curated by top San Diego trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos since its inception in 2015. Castellanos performed at all three days of the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival, which included the debut of the Binational Youth Ensemble. The nine-piece band teamed students from Castellanos’ Young Lions Jazz Conservatory and Ensenada trumpeter Ivan Trujillo’s Instituto Contemporáneo de Música de Baja California.

Trujillo this year became the first Mexican artist to receive a Jazz Hero Award from the New York-based Jazz Journalists Association in the 23 years that the honor has been bestowed. He and Castellanos both performed at Lou Lou’s Jungle Room, the new jazz dinner club that opened in January at the Lafayette Hotel in North Park.

In La Jolla, the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library celebrated the 33rd anniversary of its jazz series, which this year included 13 concerts at three venues by such esteemed artists as pianists Brad Mehldau and Fred Hersch, saxophonist Chris Potter, bassist Linda May Han Oh, singer Luciana Souza and drummers Brian Blade and Peter Erskine.

Since launching in 1989, the series has been curated by Daniel Atkinson, who this year co-founded the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival. He is executive director of the Western Jazz Presenters Network, which has 44 member organizations in 11 states, British Columbia and Baja.

A few blocks from the Athenaeum, La Jolla Music Society presented more jazz concerts than ever before in both its Baker-Baum Concert Hall and cabaret-styled venue, The JAI. The lineup included saxophonists Charles McPherson and Branford Marsalis, vibraphonist Joel Ross, and other established stars and rising talents.

The society also hosted keyboard legend Hancock as part of its weeklong jazz piano festival. And it had McPherson, a longtime San Diego resident whose music is internationally celebrated, curate several gigs at The JAI.

In nearby Del Mar, the three-day San Diego Jazz Party celebrated its 36th anniversary with a lineup that included the tireless tenor sax standout Houston Person. He will return for the 2025 edition, which takes places Feb. 21-23 at Hilton San Diego Del Mar.

The all-ages Dizzy’s in Bay Park turned 23 this year, while leading flutist Holly Hofmann celebrated the second anniversary of her free weekly Sunday afternoon jazz concerts and jam sessions at Tio Leo’s in Bay Park and noted singer Leonard Patton’s Jazz Lounge celebrated its third anniversary.

All three venues showcase national and local talents alike, and all three are vital components in this region’s rich live jazz scene. So, at least periodically, is The Loft at UC San Diego, whose upcoming lineup includes concerts by rising young saxophonists Nubya Garcia and Isaiah Collier.

As in previous years, nearly every 2024 jazz event of note here benefited from the enthusiastic support of KSDS-FM. The award-winning San Diego station this year presented a number of prominent artists on its “Jazz Live” concert broadcast show, including Ravi Coltrane, Roy McCurdy and San Diego flutist Lori Bell.

KSDS also staged separate performances honoring jazz icons Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell that featured McPherson, Castellanos, trumpeter Jon Faddis, pianist Joshua White and more. White will perform April 26 at Jacobs Music Center at the Castellanos-led concert saluting the legacies of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Much like the jazz scene in San Diego and beyond, it should be an event well worth celebrating.

As in any year, there were some setbacks, including the postponement of the eight-year-old Oxnard Jazz Festival and the announcement that Berkley’s California Jazz Conservatory is closing its doors this month, a decade after earning accreditation. Closer to home, the San Diego Jazz Fest & Swing Extravaganza was dark this year, ending — at least for now its 43-year run in Mission Valley.

But as 2024 drew to a close, news of a major new Southern California jazz venue and a new festival in Denver gave fans of the music reasons to look forward to the year ahead.

The Blue Note jazz club chain will open its latest addition in March in Hollywood. It is the latest addition to the Blue Note family — which includes clubs in Napa, New York City, Milan, Honolulu, Tokyo, Rio, Sao Paulo, Beijing and Shanghai — and the first to be operated in collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

In a concurrent move, the Hollywood Bowl Jazz Festival, which started in 1979 as the Playboy Jazz Festival, will begin a new chapter in 2025 as the Blue Note Jazz Festival.

Next year will also see the debut of the Denver Jazz Fest, a four-day event that is being co-produced by Don Lucoff, a San Diego State University alum and former KSDS-FM disc jockey. The lineup for the April 3-6 festival, which will be held in multiple Denver venues, includes Dianne Reeves, Joe Lovano’s Paramount Quartet, Omar Sosa, Bill Frisell and San Diego’s Charles McPherson, who will celebrate his 86th birthday on July 24.

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