San Jose Jazz Summer Fest expands into downtown’s grandest stage

The majestic California Theatre joins the lineup of stages, hosting 18 performances for this weekend's big festival in downtown San Jose.

San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has taken recently to talking about the city’s “experience economy,” and you can look around at San Jose Jazz’s Summer Fest this weekend if you want to know what that looks like. There’ll be thousands of people from the Bay Area and beyond soaking up the sun, music and vibes in downtown San Jose.

The lineup is eclectic, as usual, with Herbie Hancock, Lisa Fischer, the Family Stone, the Spanish Harlem Orchestra and Delfeayo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra headlining the outdoor stages throughout the weekend. But fans should consider heading indoors for a bit, too, as Summer Fest has brought back the majestic California Theatre as a venue this year.

“There’s great sound in here,” San Jose Jazz Executive Director Brendan Rawson said, looking around the empty theater this week. “There’s a great piano. The presentation here is a powerful.”

There’ll be 18 performances at the California over the weekend, split between the main stage and a more intimate stage on the mezzanine level dubbed the California Music Lounge. Performers include the Jorge Luis Pacheco Trio, Dominique Fils-Aimé, the Sean Mason Quartet, and the Roberta Gambarini Quartet.

The California hasn’t been used as a festival stage since 2016, and it was a late substitution this year. Festival and Artistic Director Bruce Labadie said the festival couldn’t afford to book the Hammer Theatre Center — which has hosted two stages in recent years — but was fortunate to get the California as a replacement. Both indoor venues are sophisticated and wonderful, Labadie said, but the California, which first opened in 1927 and was restored in 2006, definitely adds a level of grandeur.

“This is world class,” he said.

There are a few other changes this year, too. With construction on Park Avenue done (for now), the PG&E Latin Jazz/Tropical stage has been moved there from South First Street where it had been the past two years. Now, this will provide a little more room for dancing, which isn’t a bad thing, and it’s also closer to the Jay Paul Co. Main Stage and inside the festival gates — which is great for stage-hoppers who don’t want to go through security over and over. But it also means the Latin Jazz/Tropical Stage requires a wristband.

But there are still two free stages open to the public: The ASML Next Gen Stage at the San Jose Museum of Art and the Swing Stage, which will be hosted in the outdoor courtyard of San Pedro Square Market, following the closure of Tabard Theatre, the stage’s longtime venue.

Sadly, the Jazz Mass at St. Joseph Cathedral Basilica, one of my all-time festival faves, still hasn’t made a return, but there are a whole host of options Sunday morning including a New Orleans Sunday Brunch at Poor House Bistro with saxophonist Abraham Vasquez; a Gospel Brunch at the San Jose Marriott featuring vocalist Joyce Randolph, accompanied by Janice Maxie Reid; a Boom Box Brunch with R&B hits at Mama Kin; a Jazz Service at the First Unitarian Church on North Third Street; and Urban Sanctuary at 80 S. Fifth St. is hosting a “Soulful Sunday” with Hammond organ music.

You might want a chart to keep all this straight, but fortunately, there’s an app for that. San Jose Jazz launched a new Summer Fest app (available on the Google Play and Apple App stores) with schedules, a map, tickets and even a listing of food trucks and booths that will be on the festival grounds. You can also get more information on everything at summerfest.sanjosejazz.org.

STAGE DIRECTIONS: It’s always a delight to hear about work involving Timothy Near, who led San Jose Rep as its artistic director for 21 years. She’s next directing a staged reading of “Molly Bell’s Hysterical,” a new musical that’s part of TheatreWorks Silicon Valley’s New Works Festival at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto.

Bell — who got her start with Los Altos Youth Theater and at St. Francis High School — recently won a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for her performance in TheatreWorks’ “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”

“She’s wildly entertaining,” Near says. And you can find out for yourself at the staged readings on Aug. 10, 16 and 18. Tickets to that show — and the rest of the New Works Festival, which runs Aug. 9-24 — are available at theatreworks.org.

UNSTOPPABLE FORCES: Gerry Lopez, a Bay Area educator and historian, will be displaying his collection of more than 300 items in an exhibition about the 201st Mexican Fighter Squadron this Saturday at the annual Spirit of ’45 Day celebration at History Park in San Jose. The event commemorates the end of World War II, and Lopez says the 201st is an important part of the war’s story. The “Aztec Eagles,” as they were known, were attached to the U.S. Army Air Force’s 58th Fighter Group during the liberation of the island of Luzon in the summer of 1945.

“It is an incredible time in history when Mexicans, Americans and Filipinos came together to fight a common enemy and oppressor,” Lopez said. “And this small but significant involvement changed Mexico-U.S. relations up until our day.”

Besides Lopez’s display, the event starts at 2 p.m. with big band music, kids activities, fashion and car shows, a World War II tent city and a homecoming parade, leading up to a 1940s swing dance at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at historysanjose.org/program-events.