A vegan café in downtown South San Francisco isn’t the first (or second) place I’d expect to find an ongoing performance series exploring the state of the Asian-American jazz movement, but after checking Sky Café out last weekend, it all made perfect sense.
A note from Pinole-based, British Columbia-born bass guitarist and composer Chris Trinidad about the series he’s curating, “Directions In Music Making By Asian American (and One Canadian) Improvisors II,” got me out of the house last Saturday. Arriving just after noon at Sky Café’s inviting Grand Avenue storefront, I followed the sound of the music through the front room to an enclosed, wood-paneled side patio where I found four musicians set up on a low wooden bandstand.
Billed as “Kulintang Kollaborations II,” the quartet — featuring Trinidad, Conrad Benedicto on the traditional Philippine brass gong kulintang, Carie Jahde on drums, and Francis Wong on soprano sax — was deep into Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints,” taking the standard into a shimmering vortex. The keening tone of Wong’s soprano sax melded effectively with the kulintang’s ringing pitches, while Jahde’s supple cymbal work filled out the metallic upper register leaving Trinidad ample space at the bottom.
More than an instrumental performance, the Sky Café event unfolded like an open-ended conversation. Benedicto talked about how kulintang, which, in the Philippines, is strongly identified with the southern islands of Mindanao and Sulu, “has become an expression of Filipino-American identity, a diaspora phenomenon.” Reading a passage from his fantasy novel “Musalaya’s Gift,” about a kulintang healing ceremony, he gained momentum as the other musicians gradually started playing behind him, adding drama to the scenes with watercolor sonic backdrops.
Trinidad and Wong are the guiding spirits behind the series, which continues with “Nikkei Stories” Saturday, March 16, when they’ll be joined by taiko and dance artist Melody Takata, and “Traditions Transformed” March 23 with Christopher Lam on Vietnamese monochord (dàn bầu), Jacqueline Lam on Vietnamese zither (dàn tranh), and drummer Carrie Jahde. The series closes with “Glenn Horiuchi Legacy Project” March 30, when Wong, Trinidad and Jahde will perform with pianist/flutist Erika Oba, playing music by, and associated with, the late Japanese-American pianist and composer.
In many ways, the focus on Asian-American jazz grew out of South San Francisco history. Trinidad started playing Saturday afternoons at the spot with various versions of his trio last summer after he reconnected with Sky Café chef and proprietor Kenny Annis, a bassist and guitarist he’d gotten to know in the late aughts performing with singer/songwriter Naima Shalhoub and other artists.
“I called it a residency, and I was booking whoever was available,” said Trinidad, who also works as a choral director and arranger at churches around the region. That noontime spot, musicians are either waking up or generally available. It was a great opportunity because even though I’ve been a sideman for so long, I kept up my own writing, and this became an opportunity to work with all these tunes.”
Francis Wong, a foundational figure in the Asian-American jazz scene since he co-founded Asian Improv Arts in the 1980s, grew up in South San Francisco and still lives close by. “These are my old stomping grounds,” he said during the set break, while detailing the various kinds of music he played in the neighborhood while coming up, including funk, R&B, country and swing. Taking note of Trinidad’s Sky Café residency, he got in touch and ended up coming by to sit in with his horn.
Trinidad, who grew up in Vancouver and moved to the Bay Area in 2009, didn’t know much about Wong’s history, or the extensive body of work encompassing musicians of Chinese, Japanese, Philippine, Indian (and, much more recently, Korean) descent who combine jazz with traditional instruments, idioms and folklore. Over the months, he started to get a deeper understanding of the saxophonist’s contributions and realized “I was working with a legend,” he said. “He’d bring tunes into the group, and it’s been such a fantastic opportunity to learn more.”
Last fall, Wong suggested turning the Saturday afternoon shows into a series examining the past, present and future of Asian-American jazz. And, much like Wong and pianist/composer Jon Jang his Asian Improv co-founder took inspiration from Chicago’s Afro-centric Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians collective, Trinidad cast a wide net to include poets, writers, and dancers.
“I didn’t really know this whole lineage existed until I met Francis,” he said.
“I came to learn about the history of Asian improv and the multidisciplinary nature of the scene that he and Jon Jang and others in the movement cultivated, with culture bearers of all types, traditional and improvising musicians, storytellers, dancers, poets.”
“Directions In Music Making” launched in January with four concerts that featured poet Genny Lim, Erika Oba exploring the music of Glenn Horiuchi, Conrad Benedicto’s kulintang, and Wong’s compositions with guitarist Karl Evangelista.
“It went so well, we thought, let’s do it again,” Trinidad said. The plan now is to alternate “Directions” with months featuring his own music. In April, Trinidad will be back with his trio and guests, followed by the third iteration of “Directions” in May, “and keep going until Kenny says no more,” he said with a laugh.
Barrio Manouche returns to the Mission
In the years just before the pandemic, Barrio Manouche was one of the most exciting new bands on the Bay Area music scene, adding a turbo-charged Andalusian spin to the Gypsy swing sound created by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli in the mid-1930s. The group, which played many of its formative gigs at Bissap Baobab, has been slow to return to action, which makes Saturday’s performance at The Chapel something of a rebirth.
Founded and led by Spanish guitarist/vocalist Javi Jiménez, the group features Ross Howe on rhythm guitar, Cyril Guiraud on saxophones and Brazilian caxixi, Magali Sanscartier on violin, vocals and percussion, Luis Jiménez on cajón and percussions, Ivan Rondon on bongos, vocals and flute, bassist Gary Johnson, and Fanny Ara on dance, palmas, castanets and vocals. Dos Bandoleros, the duo of Makrú percussionist Raúl Vargas and singer/guitarist Alberto Gutierrez from La Mandanga, play an opening set.
And, at the Make Out Room
The Make Out Room continues to bring adventurous music to the Mission, though instead of the Monday slot, the next session takes place Tuesday March 19, with an early 7 p.m. set by guitarist Karl Evangelista Ai-Ai, a 7:45 p.m. duo set by saxophonist Kasey Knudsen, and wildman vocalist Lorin Benedict, and an 8:30 p.m. set with Dave Slusser & Lost Planet featuring guitarists Steve Clarke and Len Paterson, drummer Tim Vaughan, and Slusser on flute, keys and tenor saxophone.