Why not start off 2022 with a free look at some of the best art in town? This Friday, the San Jose Museum of Art gets the year started right with three hours of complimentary art, ranging from vibrant abstract paintings (Break + Bleed) to inquisitive looks at the human body (Our Whole, Unruly Selves). The evening also includes live music from San Jose Jazz, and light bites and hefty pours from el cafecito. It’s a great opportunity to take in Do Ho Suh: Karma one last time, before the mind-bending sculpture leaves the museum later this month.

First Friday
Fri, 6-9pm, Free
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose

San Jose Jazz aims to inspire listeners of all ages to get excited and moved by jazz—and the holiday season is no reason to stifle that goal. This Thursday, the nonprofit will host a second performance at San Jose’s annual Christmas in the Park celebration, free and open to the public. The event will include a combo led by renowned local guitarist David Lechuga—whose playing complements everything from salsa to emo—with the added benefit of the park for jazz fans to explore. Jazz fans and fans of the holiday alike can walk through the 65-foot-tall Christmas tree, grab an adult beverage from Blinky’s Tavern’s outdoor pop-up and rock out to some smooth tunes.
Jazz in the Park
Thu, 7pm, Free
Plaza de Cesar Chávez, San Jose

Though it is only roughly the size of Connecticut, Jamaica’s influence on world culture is impossible to overstate. This week, Jamaican artist Ebony G. Patterson’s stunning mixed-media exhibit wraps up at San Jose’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and to celebrate the run, San Jose Jazz hosts “Reggae Warrior” Winstrong out front in their roving Boombox Truck. The mighty singer takes influence from genre-melding artists like KRS-One, and mixes dancehall, hip hop, roots and reggae into an inspired whole. He’s got a conscious message, too, as heard on his evergreen dub single “Save the Environment.”

Winstrong
Friday, 8pm, Free
Parque de los Pobladores, San Jose

These days, Brandon Coleman has exactly one thing on his mind:

“Trying to influence the music industry to produce more original music instead of just the status quo,” says the keyboardist/vocalist/arranger.

If anyone could do it, Coleman just might be the guy. Over the past decade and change, the man sometimes known as “Professor Boogie” has collaborated with many of the most influential musicians of our era, contributing piano, keys, or arrangements to works by Donald Glover/Childish Gambino, Flying Lotus, Kamasi Washington and Thundercat (among others), as well as working as writing partner with R&B powerhouse Babyface. In 2018, he released his first solo album, the bold, conscious and interdimensionally funky Resistance, via Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label.

This weekend, Coleman and band make a stop downtown for San Jose Jazz’s Summer Fest. His appearance comes at a busy time in the already busy musician’s career. On top of planning and prepping for tour and his normal work writing arrangements, he’s recently started a record label, a production company and even begun producing a TV show—all while working on his second solo album.

“I feel like the music I’m doing now is just along the lines of my life,” he says. “It’s an amalgam of all of my thoughts, and all of the records that have influenced me.”

Already, Resistance was quite an amalgam. Mixing jazz, disco, R&B, hip hop and film scores, and running them all through a funky, space-age filter, the expansive album fit in few boxes. Even its recording was unorthodox: Coleman recorded Resistance over the span of about six years, taking advantage of unused hours from sessions with his many collaborators. If you hear flecks of stardust on the P-Funk-via-J-Dilla thump of “Giant Feelings,” or feel transported to an interplanetary current on the title track, possibly that’s because both were recorded during the same session as Kamasi Washington’s galactic modern jazz goliath The Epic.

“I’d record in different studios, for different projects, and just be like, ‘I like this song, I’ll tuck it away,’” Coleman recalls.

So when Flying Lotus asked him about doing a solo record, the two sat down and started combing through all the songs he’d put together. Right away, the visionary producer started gravitating towards one thing.

“He really wanted to stick with the funky stuff,” Coleman remembers. “Once I got an idea of what the record label wanted, I pieced together songs based on that. I found all the funky stuff on my hard drive.”

Resistance is certainly funky. After a cinematic swell of strings that rises like leaves in a gentle updraft, the beat kicks in on a thick groove, setting the stage for Coleman to let loose a statement of purpose: “I’m in it for the rest of my life.” From that point on, Resistance is all swagger and float, picking up confidence with each unexpected influence brought in, from filmic woodwind flares, to interstellar disco strings.

One major component of the record is Coleman’s consistent use of vocoder, the roboticizing vocal effect originally pioneered for espionage. Vocoder appears on nearly all of Coleman’s vocal tracks on the album, sometimes in subtle ways—as on the smooth falsetto from “There’s No Turning Back”—sometimes in ways impossible to overlook, as on the melody from retro-futurist robo-sex jam “Sexy.” At all times, it is an undeniable part of Resistance.

“I have not seen anybody use the vocoder the way I’m using it,” he says. “People use it as a novelty. It’s like they think of it as a vocoder. I don’t see it as a vocoder. I see it as the human voice—but electric.”

But just as any revolution must first begin within, Coleman won’t be repeating himself while fighting for a more original music industry. He vows his next record will be bound neither by funk, nor any other genre.

“The stuff that I’m writing now is more unapologetic: I don’t really care about other people’s thoughts about my music anymore. I’ve just let that go completely. And because of that, it’s opened up a new door to wherever I can go,” he says. “The Black diaspora is so much more than just making people dance. I’m just using my creativity to help expand the diaspora.”

Brandon Coleman
Sat, 3pm, $35
Hammer Theatre Stage, San Jose

Back from its hiatus in 2020, San Jose Jazz’s yearly live and local music extravaganza is headed to quite a few stages around San Jose this weekend. From Friday on, many incredible musicians will be performing in nooks and crannies all throughout downtown San Jose, including local artists like the 7th St. Big Band, Joy Hackett and the SJZ Collective, as well as marquee guests like Common, Kandace Springs, Shamarr Allen and the Underdogs, Morris Day and the Time, Quiana Lynell, Las Chikas and more. A San Jose tradition more than thirty years running.

SJZ Summer Fest
Fri-Sun, Various Times, $35+
Downtown, San Jose

Ian Santillano may be from Hayward, but the spunky young guitarist and self-described “Greasy Mayer” spends a lot of time gigging in San Jose. This Friday’s free livestream will be filmed on stage at Art Boutiki, an appropriately funky location for Santillano’s deep grooves, soulful melodies, and sweat-drenched fretboard freakouts. The guitarist recently also composed a new tune for San Jose Jazz, as part of their Jazz Aid Fund grant program. A little bit of soul, a little bit of rock, and a whole lot of heart. That’s the Greasy Mayer.

Ian Santillano
Fri, June 4, Free (registration required)

San Jose Jazz Winter Fest returns to downtown Feb. 14. This year, as always, the festival features a lineup of traditionalists and forward-thinking rule-benders. Here are just a few of this year’s acts. For more info on tickets and the performers, go to sanjosejazz.org.

The Revelers
Feb 14, 8pm
Poor House Bistro Studio, San Jose

Even for those who’ve never been anywhere near New Orleans, there’s something irresistible about that sprightly Cajun beat and that slippery zydeco sound. Coming straight out of Lafayette, in southwest Louisiana, this six-man outfit mixes Cajun swing, zydeco blues and a uniquely regional style of R&B they call “swamp rock” to create a funky-but-soulful dance style that earned them a Grammy nomination for Best Regional Roots album. These guys bow to tradition, but they’re much more interested in hybrid forms that make their high-stepping sound more appealing to mainstream audiences.

Georgia on My Mind
Feb 18, 7pm
Hammer Theatre Center, San Jose

The late, great Ray Charles will be on everyone’s mind at this tribute show featuring a summit-like coming-together of amazing soul and jazz musicians. The vocal group Take 6 has collected 10 Grammys and their list of collaborators includes the iconic Mr. Charles himself. Also on board is Grammy-nominated vocalist Clint Holmes, and the accomplished jazz singer Nnenna Freelon who toured with Charles for years and has performed the Georgia On My Mind show since 2014. Throw in the fine saxophonist Kirk Whalum, and you have a stellar showcase of the familiar music of a beloved American original.

The Lique
Feb 20, 8pm
The Art Boutiki, San Jose

The Lique (pronounced “the leak”) first came about when a four-man group arose from the jazz program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. When they met rapper Rasar Amani, who hails from Sacramento, they knew they had found the missing piece. Together they blend sharply defined, cutting-edge jazz with funky, quicksilver hip-hop and have become one of the most popular home-grown acts to perform regularly on the Las Vegas Strip. (Check out the band’s unique tribute to the famous Dark Knight in their original song “Batman.”) The Lique comes to town with a smart new album titled Times Like These, featuring their vibrant new single “I Am.”

Los Hermanos Arango
Feb 28, 8pm
The Art Boutiki, San Jose

This six-person family band from Guanabacoa, Cuba has performed all over the world as ambassadors for the Afro-Cuban form known as “timba.” Not only are they all master musicians, several have musicologist’s interests in the music of Cuba—frontman Feliciano Arango, for example, has written two books on Cuban timba and starred in two documentaries on contemporary Cuban music. The band’s sound blends traditional Afro-Cuban styles—some with roots in the West-African Yoruban tradition—with a funk-heavy jazz component, creating something they call “folklo-jazz.” Their latest release Bendita Guanabacoa has been nominated for three Cubadisco awards.

Halie Loren
Feb 29, 7:30pm
Café Strich, San Jose

Alaska-born, Oregon-based singer-songwriter Halie Loren attracted mainstream attention early on, having won a songwriting competition at the tender age of 13. By the time she turned 20, she was touring the world and since then, she’s released a half-dozen albums and has recorded songs in Spanish, French, Japanese and Korean. (She’s had particular success in Japan, scoring four No. 1 albums.) She’s also collaborated with several symphony orchestras and jazz combos, making her equally comfortable in concert halls and jazz clubs. Her most recent recording, From the Wild Sky, is a collection of lush, jazz-flavored tunes that showcases her diverse musical appetites.

From the 17th floor of the KQED building downtown, San Jose is an impressive sight. The city of more than a million sprawls, unfurling against mountain ranges to the east and south and against an equally sublime range of suburbs to the north.

Normally, this view is only available to members of the Silicon Valley Capital Club. Today, however, there is an interloper among their ranks—a different kind of San Jose elite, still not quite used to the high life: producer B. Lewis.

It’s 10am and Lewis has already had a full day. While the rest of the coast was asleep, he was finalizing the art for his first proper full-length release, putting the finishing touches on an album cover he designed himself. Next, he packed a duffle bag and got in the car. When the sun finally rose over the Sierra Nevadas, he was already north of Bakersfield on the I-5, making a trip from his new home in Los Angeles back to the place where it all began: San Jose.

This week, Lewis releases his debut, Sunset on Carmella. Commissioned by San Jose Jazz, the record caps off a yearlong partnership between the musician and the local non-profit arts organization, which included a number of public performances and a series of lessons on music production delivered to a group of South Bay high school students.

For Lewis, the album is something of a farewell to his longtime home. In October, the producer moved to LA after signing a deal a major management team, the same group behind some of the biggest pop hits of the last few years.

Pick one—the new record or inking the deal—and it would already be a banner year for the producer. Yet both moves pale in comparison to Lewis’s other recent accomplishment: a writing credit on an album released just a few weeks ago by Kanye West.

The road here has been neither easy nor direct. In San Jose, few lamps light the way of the artist. But from the 17th floor, as the city comes to life, and Lewis puts a decade of grinding behind him, his future is looking bright.

PASSING PORTRAITS

Born in San Jose in 1988, Bradford Lewis was raised in a musical household. The son of a jazz musician, he started playing bass while still in elementary school. “Then guitar, and then piano. Pretty much all self-taught,” he says.

In his early years, the Lewis family moved around a lot, bouncing from Los Gatos to Willow Glen to South San Jose. Eventually, they settled in Evergreen.

As a teenager, Lewis began going to all-ages shows in San Jose and Santa Cruz, most of them in DIY spots, church basements and community centers.

“I was watching these bands and thinking, ‘I can do this shit,’” he remembers.

Inspired by the scene’s accessibility, he started his first band in high school: a metal band he describes as “experimental and wild.”

“I was like, ‘What if we got thicker strings, tune down to Drop G and just see what happens?’”

That project was a learning experience. In addition to writing all the music, Lewis provided the equipment and practice space (the family garage), booked the shows and even drove the band around.

“It came to a point in time where I thought, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’”

For Lewis, the point had always been the music. Playing in the band got him interacting with other musicians and up on stage for the first time. Unequal workload aside, he enjoyed it. So, in 2007, after graduating high school, he enrolled at Ex’Pression College (now known as SAE Expression College) a local private university focused on training students for jobs in the entertainment industry. There, he began to hone his production skills, learning how to engineer, record and mix a session.

But all of that would just be prologue, the price of entry into a great coliseum of working musicians, all of them fighting the impossible and trying to survive in the Bay Area.

CHOICES

Like a true DJ, Shea Modiri gets his music the hard way: digging through the crates and checking out what he finds.

“I just love music,” the 38-year-old selector and show promoter says. These days, Modiri is a part of the soul and R&B night “The Changing Same” at The Continental, where he spins under the moniker Shea Butter.

The first time he heard B. Lewis, Modiri was doing a little digital crate-digging on Bandcamp, clicking his way through every single release tagged “San Jose,” just to see what he’d find. That’s when he discovered one of Lewis’s first beat tapes.

“He stood out,” Modiri says. “I was like, ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’”

He was mystified. At the time, he had been organizing a recurring party called The Treatment. He thought he knew the San Jose music like the back of his hand. But then, here was this guy with these crazy beats.

Soon after, Mordiri saw that Lewis was playing a show at First Street Billiards, the former pool hall now home to Forager.

“I was, like, a fan,” he says. “I went up to him and I was like, ‘Dude, I love your shit. You’re awesome.’”

He invited Lewis to perform at The Treatment , and they became fast friends.

Modiri started coming by the studio, aka the garage at Lewis’s mom’s house.

“That was not a comfortable studio,” he says. “It’s a garage. So when it was hot, it was fucking hot in there. And when it was cold, it was fucking cold.”

Still, Modiri was impressed by the music. Even more so, he was also impressed by Lewis’s work ethic.

If Lewis eventually had to move to LA to get where he wanted to go with music, it was certainly not for lack of trying here. From 2009 on, he collaborated with a vast range of artists big and small, many of them people he’d met around the Bay Area. There was K.Flay, whose debut album had recently cracked the top 15 on the Billboard rap charts. There was a tour with Sonnymoon, a band featuring Anna Wise, who had just recorded all the female vocal parts on Kendrick Lamar’s studio debut, Good Kid M.A.A.D. City. In 2014, he produced Winter & The Wolves by Rhymesayers rapper Grieves, putting him in touch with the Midwest’s famously vibrant underground hip-hop scene. That record even featured an appearance by underground hip-hop heavyweight Slug, of Rhymesayers’ marquee act Atmosphere.

“We did about 85 percent of that album here in my studio,” Lewis told me back in 2016. “Slug doesn’t really do features anymore, so that was kind of a cool thing to put on my resume.”

The more he collaborated with people, met people from outside of San Jose who were connecting nationwide, the more people took notice of his work—and the drive that Mordiri had picked up on years earlier.

“He probably works 10 to 14 hours a day at recording music,” Modiri says. “All he does is make music. But unless you’re working with him, you don’t see it. It probably just comes off as, ‘Oh, he’s really talented.’ In reality, it’s years and years and years of being locked up in his studio.”

One of the people who noticed Lewis’ dedication was a musician in LA named Scott Fulton.

“I came upon his work on a music blog,” Fulton says. “He released this album of beats that really caught my attention. The production was really unique and forward-thinking. I listened to it a ton at the time.”

A few years later, Fulton moved to the Bay Area and began working for San Jose Jazz. At that year’s Winter Fest, while watching Thundercat play, he recognized Lewis in the crowd.

“Only at that point did I realize he was a San Jose-based artist,” he says.

STRANGE THINGS

By 2017, Lewis and Modiri had been friends for the better part of a decade, and their relationship had begun to change.

“It was just organic,” says Modiri. “It was never like, ‘Hey, be my manager…’ But that’s exactly what happened.”

In his first act as manager, Modiri told Lewis to write up a list of all the people he wanted to work with. After one look at that list, he gave Lewis a clear directive.

“He was like, ‘You need to get to LA ASAP. There’s nothing here for you in San Jose anymore,’” Lewis recalls.

Taking his new manager’s advice, Lewis started making trips down to Los Angeles, staying for a week or two and doing the same thing he’d been doing in the Bay: meeting people, collaborating, grinding. It didn’t take him long to get in with in with the promoters of the iconic, long-running and now-retired LA party, the Low End Theory.

“It was very similar to what we were doing up here with The Treatment—a beats night,” says Modiri.

At Low End Theory Lewis was a hit, and was brought back repeatedly (including once for one of the event’s farewell shows). There, he made connections with a range of new people—among them an LA-based producer named Falcons. In 2018, Lewis and Falcons put out their collaborative Daydrift EP, a moody blur of neon synths, backpacker beats, and big pop hooks. With a team already behind Falcons, the five-song set brought Lewis’s music to an even wider audience.

Around the same time, Lewis had begun working on some tracks with a friend in LA he just calls “Jerry.”

“We have a good connection, good vibe,” Lewis says. “We like making weird stuff.”

One night while working on music together, Jerry told Lewis that Kanye was on the hunt for new beats. “I’m like, ‘Sure Kanye’s looking,’” Lewis remembers, not thinking much of it. “Everybody’s always looking.’”

Without fretting over who might ultimately listen to the session, the two set about working on a couple ideas. One of them had all the hallmarks of a B. Lewis song: dreamy, floating synth pads, understated rhythm, a subtly complex chord progression. That idea started to catch and they recorded a vocal melody: a soft, crooning vocal line that creeps upward as the chords resolve underneath.

At the end of the night, they had three or four songs. By then, Lewis had already written hundreds, most of them just sitting in iTunes folders on his computer, labeled by year. After the writing session, he went right back to working on his own projects and preparing for his next big collaboration.

“It was 2018, and the 50th anniversary of the Dionne Warwick song ‘Do You Know the Way to San Jose?’” says Brendan Rawson, director of San Jose Jazz. “We were thinking, San Jose is such a different place from what it was 50 years ago. What’s the soundtrack of this region today?”

To answer the question, the organization began a new concert series: “Do You Know San Jose?” In addition to performances by a number of up-and-coming local musicians, the series was to feature an artist in residence, a significant role whose duties included multiple performances, a series of lessons taught to local high school students and the commissioning of a new album. For their first artist in residence, San Jose Jazz set their sights on Lewis.

“He was really top of the list,” says Scott Fulton, now San Jose Jazz’s special projects manager. “We’re really happy he said yes.”

For Lewis, used to scraping and scrapping for every job he got, the choice was easy.

“Shea just came up to me and was like, ‘You wanna do an album for San Jose Jazz?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’”

And then he got another call.

“My buddy Jerry, he was like, ‘Yo, I think we got this Kanye cut.”

’YE AREA

On Sept. 29, 2018, B. Lewis was watching the Saturday Night Live season premiere. The musical guest that night was Kanye West.

Earlier that week, Kanye had announced a new album over Twitter along with the cover art and a date: “9.29.18.” Everything pointed toward an on-air album release. But that’s not how things went.

“Never came out,” Lewis says.

Instead, at the end of the show, Kanye delivered a pro-Trump sermon to a captive audience, dipping in and out of song as he told the crowd that white people should get to make Cosby jokes, too, and that everyone should just follow their hearts.

Understandably, Lewis was confused.

“I called my boy and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ He’s like, ‘I have no fucking idea.’”

Lewis’ connection called Kanye’s people, then called back.

“He says, ‘It’s not coming out tonight. I guess he’s putting it on hold. He wants to rewrite some shit.’”

All of this was back when the record was supposed to be called Yandhi. A few months later, Kim Kardashian West announced a new release date: Nov. 23. Like the first release date, that day came and passed with no album.

Over the next 11 months, the new Kanye album was teased repeatedly. A version of Yandhi leaked, and was even reviewed a few places. Then in January, rather than release the record, Kanye started holding gospel performances billed as “Sunday Service.” In what sounds like a scene from a particularly lazy Simpsons episode, he delivered an Easter Sunday Sunday Service at Coachella.

By then, the album had been renamed. It was no longer Yandhi, with its connotations of intellect and non-violence. Now, draped in hues of gold and royal blue, the album was called Jesus is King. West had become a born-again Christian.

Lewis, on the other hand, had begun to lose faith. For more than a year, he’d been telling people about his track on the new Kanye album. The claim was starting to sound desperate.

“Nobody believed me!” he says. “I’d been teased with this thing dropping nonstop.”

Luckily, he had other irons in the fire. The record he had done with Falcons the previous year had caught the attention of Electric Feel, the production team behind “Psycho” by Post Malone, “Havana” by Camila Cabello and other big pop hits. Scott Storch worked with them, and Frank Dukes.

“The people on that label are literally the people that he wrote down on that list three years ago,” Modiri says. “Everything was planned for him to be in this spot.”

Electric Feel wanted him to move to LA permanently. Having heard what he was capable of, they wanted him doing sessions yesterday. It had taken a decade, but he was finally where he wanted to be. All that was left to do was submit the album to San Jose Jazz. With the help of his longtime friend (and the secret ear for all his projects: his mom), he pieced together his first official solo album, Sunset on Carmella. The title captures the bittersweet nature of the moment.

“Carmella Court was where I lived,” Lewis says. “So Sunset on Carmella is like the sun going down on San Jose and rising in LA.”

SUNSET ON CARMELLA

This week, Sunset on Carmella is out on all streaming platforms. In a way, it is the start of B. Lewis’ career: his first album under his own name, with a label behind it. All it took to get here was a decade of work, hundreds of songs and dozens of collaborations.

“For me, nothing was laid out,” he says. “I just kind of found my own way. I ping-ponged around until I found my own sound.”

These days, B. Lewis is no longer a San Jose resident. But sitting over a beer at the SoFA Market in downtown, he can’t help reminiscing. Towards the end of the interview, he remembers his first paycheck, back when he was still in high school at Valley Christian.

“I worked at a machine shop,” he says. “It only lasted, like, two weeks. Not because I didn’t like it, but because my friend’s dad, who ran the place, was like, ‘You need to do music.’ I got paid like $180 or something like that. I’m glad I did it, but…”

Here he pauses. The song that had been playing over the loudspeaker has ended, and a new song is just beginning. This one begins with vocals: a soft, crooning line that creeps upward over a strange sounding chord. Together, a pair of voices sing:

We began after the storm inside

The song is “Everything We Need,” by Kanye West. The melody, sung by Ty Dolla $ign and Ant Clemons, is the same one Lewis sang, in the version he wrote at a friend’s house back before the move, back before the album and management deal, back before he ever knew any of this was going to happen.

“…but I’m doing fine,” Lewis continues, as the chorus ends and the beat kicks in. “I’m doing fine.”

IT’S ONLY A slight overstatement to call trumpeter Herb Alpert the king of 1960s easy listening music. Alpert, of course, led the staggeringly successful Tijuana Brass; if you’ve ever been in a thrift shop, you’ve seen Whipped Cream and Other Delights, the record with that famously racy cover photo. Alpert is the rare artist who topped the charts as both an instrumentalist and a singer (the latter was a rare vocal turn for 1968’s “This Guy’s in Love With You”).

And as the “A” in A&M Records, Alpert co-founded the world’s largest independent record company, releasing music by artists as diverse as Paul Williams, Joe Jackson, the Carpenters, Peter Frampton, Cheech & Chong, the Tubes, Supertramp, Janet Jackson, Gin Blossoms, Soundgarden and Robyn Hitchcock.

Alpert is best known, however, as the man who brought a kind of pop-jazz into the homes of millions. Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass—actually Alpert backed by the ubiquitous LA session aggregation known as the Wrecking Crew—released 11 albums between 1962 and 1968; six of those LPs went to No. 1 on the Billboard charts. At one point, records by the TJB even outsold the Beatles. Alpert’s chirpy, uptempo style was effectively the soundtrack for a certain segment of the ’60s lifestyle. (And speaking of soundtracks, he recorded the memorable theme song for the original Casino Royale James Bond film in 1967.)

After the Tijuana Brass years, Alpert largely left the south-of-the-border style behind, moving toward a smoother mainstream jazz sound. His 1979 single “Rise” hit the No. 1 spot on both the pop and adult contemporary charts. To date Alpert has released nearly 50 albums, 29 of which went gold or platinum.

Way back in 1973 Alpert married singer Lani Hall, who had been the vocalist in one of A&M’s popular acts, Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ’66; their “Mas Que Nada” was a hit in 1966 and earned renewed popularity when it was featured on the soundtrack of Mike Myers’ 1997 Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. Hall has yet another spy movie connection: as a solo artist, she sang the theme song to 1983’s non-canonical 007 film Never Say Never Again.

Today at age 83, Alpert is active as an abstract expressionist painter and philanthropist. And he remains a vital onstage presence. Appearing in concert together since 2006 and backed by an instrumental trio, Alpert and Hall perform a set of songs that draws upon both of their celebrated musical careers.

Herb Alpert and Lani Hall
August 12, 4 p.m. $20-$40
San Jose Jazz Summer Fest

Hanging with trumpeter Eddie Gale tends to unearth a different version of San Jose history than what you’ll hear from anyone else bouncing around the periphery of the San Jose Jazz Summer Fest. First of all, he is the only person alive in San Jose to have recorded with John Coltrane. He also jammed with Cecil Taylor and Byron Allen. At times, he ran with Louie Bellson and Dizzy Gillespie. He even toured with Sun Ra. For a spell of a few years, his drummer was Sammy Cohen, who later spent years writing music stories for Metro.

At the Summer Fest, when employees are driving golf carts back and forth between the stages, when the equivalent of a border fence encircles Plaza de Cesar Chavez, when R&B stars from 40 years ago are getting tens of thousands, and where hat vendors are more plentiful than free improv gigs, one immediately wonders why Eddie Gale has not been part of the whole shootin’ match since day one. He was living in San Jose before the San Jose Jazz Society even existed, but he hasn’t performed at the festival in many, many years.

In any event, Gale is sort of like quantum physics. You don’t have to sort it all out. But a few things rise to the surface in terms of history. After playing spiritual jazz as a Stanford artist in residence, Gale came to San Jose in 1972 and never left.

“I didn’t know San Jose except for the song,” he tells me, as we slug coffee in his front yard. He’s got decaf, me regular.

Soon enough, as he spins a matrix of rocking stories, Gale, 76, reminds me that in 1974, San Jose mayor Norman Mineta issued him the official title of San Jose’s Ambassador of Jazz. This may sound superfluous, but it’s not. To wit, the hallway leading from his front door back toward the rear of his house is a veritable museum. I see dozens of photos, awards and certificates, plus magazine stories, posters, ads and other accolades going back to the ’60s. I see shots of Gale with Bud Powell, Byron Allen, Sun Ra and Dizzy. There’s also a poster from the 50th anniversary of the UN, an event at which Gale’s band played.

Speaking of the United Nations, Gale’s music has always been infused with peace and spirituality, especially when it comes to experimentalism. At the Summer Fest this year, his nine-piece ensemble will bring at least 40 different percussion instruments and hand them out to the audience for specific numbers. Everyone will be invited to participate, inner peace being the theme. To Gale, even though jazz is an American art form, his music connects to everyone’s inner peace, no matter your country of origin. There’s no reason to put a border around the US and block out the rest of the planet’s music. This will be the theme of the night.

“Inner peace, in America and the world,” he tells me.

Eddie Gale
Aug 10, 8:30pm, All Stages Wristband
Adobe Silicon Valley Stage