Gazing up from the orchestra section of the California Theatre and observing the ornamental lattice work flanking the stage, you would be forgiven for mistaking the South First Street landmark for The Fox Theatre in Oakland. After all, the theater was built by the very same architects who erected the Fox.

And if you happened to catch Dakhabrakha’s performance at the historic hall on Sunday, it would be totally understandable for you to wonder why the California doesn’t regularly host the kinds artists that the Fox does most nights of the week. The sound is phenomenal, the space is gorgeous and the city surrounding it—San Jose—seems as if it could easily support a premier venue.

There are plenty of reasons why the California isn’t the Fox. We’ve written about at least one of them, the radius clause, quite extensively. But that’s neither here nor there, because this weekend the entirety of downtown San Jose proved—just as it proves every year around this time—that it has the venues, the population and, ostensibly, the desire to support a thriving live music scene.

San Jose Jazz Summer Fest 2016 roared into town this weekend, filling a litany of local bars, clubs and public spaces with the sounds of New Orleans brass, sultry soul, chilly jazz, rollicking blues, swinging bop and so much more. Check out photos from the three-day event here.

Adrian Younge. Photo by Greg Ramar.

The festival—which in recent years has taken a page out of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass playbook by “hardly strictly” sticking to traditional jazz—also presented a bevy of artists on the periphery of jazz: boundary-pushing artists adept at taking the pre-proto-punk ethos of jazz and running with it. Dakhabrakha, a Ukranian quartet specializing in a style of music they call “ethnic chaos,” falls into this category.

They also fall into the category of performers who make appearances on taste-making programs like NPR’s “Tiny Desk” and record impromptu “takeaway shows” for La Blogotheque.

They are pretty damn hip is what I’m saying. And that’s exciting.

Walking around downtown San Jose on Saturday night, as people both young and old scurried between venues, queuing up in long lines to get into venues, it felt a bit like Austin during SXSW—maybe not E. 6th Street, but one of the surrounding thoroughfares—bustling with excited music fans, struggling to figure out which show they ought to check out next. It’s one of those problems that’s a luxury to have, and one we should all hope San Jose has plenty more of in the near future.

Nia Andrews. Photo by Greg Ramar.

Miguel Zenon Quartet. Photo by Greg Ramar.

Terrie Odabi. Photo by Greg Ramar.

Josh Johnson with Mark De Clive-Lowe. Photo by Greg Ramar.

Freddie Joachim. Photo by Greg Ramar.

BottleRock, the Napa Valley music, food and art festival, has come a long way since it’s inaugural year in 2013, when the founding promoters lost their collective shirts on the event.

I didn’t make it to the first BottleRock, which featured headliners Kings of Leon, The Black Keys, Zack Brown Band and Further. But I did attend the 2014 festival—described by the festival’s new promoters, Latitude 38 Entertainment, as a “rebuilding year” in an interview with the Napa Valley Register.

Indeed, the 2014 festival had the feel of an event that was held together with superglue and duct tape. Things were working, but it was far from perfect. In particular, the parking situation in 2014 was a total mess: as I was attempting to leave, I asked a multitude of staffers where to find the shuttles to take me back to the offsite parking lot, which was several miles away. Ultimately, I found myself standing on a bridge overlooking the Napa River and nowhere near where I needed to be.

This year was different. Though I didn’t use the offsite parking, exiting the festival I did see much more staff directing foot traffic; the fully functional mobile app, was integrated with Spotify and Facebook and pinged me with reminders of the bands I wanted to see; festival wristbands were digitized, with tiny chip-embedded medallions, which I used to enter the festival every day; and there were far more food vendors that I could have hoped to sample over the course of my three days there.

All in all, BottleRock 2016 seems like a festival that’s all grown up. I look forward to next year. Until then, check out a collection of pics from this year’s event below, or check out the full gallery here.

For the full gallery, click here.