Bay Area Jazz Hero
In the summer of 1972 Jim Nadel had no inkling he was setting out on a grand endeavor that would play a crucial role in shaping the evolution of jazz in the 21st century. An alto saxophonist who’d recently graduated from Stanford University with a degree in music, he’d been participating in the Stanford Coffee Shop’s Monday night jam sessions and wanted to create a forum for musicians to share information. What started as a Tuesday night study group slowly blossomed into the Stanford Jazz Workshop, which in turn gave birth to the Stanford Jazz Festival, one of the West Coast’s premiere concert series.
Was it all part of some grand plan? “The short answer is ‘No,’ because I didn’t make a conscious decision to form a jazz service organization,” he told the Bay Area News Group in an interview celebrating the SJW’s 40th anniversary, Now it’s celebrating its 50th. “However, the initial idea of celebrating this music in a community with an open exchange of information immediately resonated with musicians, students and listeners, and it’s been one continuous evolution.”
During the Workshop’s first decade it was mostly a local affair, but in 1982 the Workshop catapulted into national prominence when Nadel recruited
tenor sax legend Stan Getz to join the faculty. The Workshop always had a performance component, but Getz, who was living in San Francisco at the time, turned it into a marquee event while attracting a growing cadre of foreign students.
“Stan had never been available to teach, so it was a newsworthy event in the jazz world, and we attracted students from Europe,” Nadel said. “The program doubled in size every year until we reached capacity. We became a non-profit. When the Internet arrived, we became known internationally, and enrolled our first student from Sri Lanka!”
The Workshop currently consists of two one-week Jazz Camp sessions for all levels of musicians ages 12-17 and the one-week Jazz Residency program for adults and advanced young players. Before the pandemic, some 900 students participated along with about 90 faculty members, many of whom are featured in the festival. The list of jazz masters who’ve served on the faculty is vast, including Tootie Heath, George Cables, Dena DeRose, Charles McPherson, Kenny Barron, Rufus Reid, etc. But what’s most impressive is that numerous students who grew up at the Workshop are now faculty, and featured performers at the festival.
“In the cases of Larry Grenadier, Taylor Eigsti, Dayna Stephens, Ambrose Akinmusire, Dana Leong, Sylvia Cuenca and many others, it’s like watching close family members grow up,” Nadel said. “It’s not just that they’ve gone on to become leaders in the field and superb jazz artists; it’s that they embody the Workshop’s spirit. They’ve all become catalysts in the world of jazz, and they’re in the thick of the development of new sounds, new collaborations and new directions in jazz.”
Running the Stanford Jazz Workshop and Stanford Jazz Festival with a steady hand and a calm head through decades of unprecedented challenges, Jim Nadel is the 2022 Bay Area Jazz Hero. — Andy Gilbert
