Nov 19, 2024 12:57 PM
In Memoriam: Roy Haynes, 1925–2024
Powerhouse jazz drummer and bandleader Roy Haynes died Tuesday in Nassau County, New York. He was 99. One of the few…
Charlton Singleton of band Ranky Tanky performed in the The Soraya’s Jazz Club in January.
(Photo: Luis Luque)The $125 million Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts on the California State University, Northridge (CSUN) campus has become a jazz destination for performers and Southern Californian audience members alike since its opening in 2011.
“We’re very excited about where we’ve landed in the jazz world, meaning artists’ interest in performing here,” said Thor Steingraber, Soraya’s executive and artistic director, when queried about the performing arts center’s rapid rise in the region’s jazz ecosystem. “Justin (Souza), who’s our head of programming, invests a lot of time in his relationships with both the artists and their representation.
Those artists include everyone from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Herb Alpert & Lani Hall and Charles Lloyd to Jon Batiste, Melissa Aldana and Vijay Iyer. Headliners can be booked in the 1,700-seat hall or, as of 2018, the 220-seat pop-up on-stage venue.
“To be honest, people pick up the phone when the Hollywood Bowl or Monterey Jazz Festival calls, obviously. But a venue like ours, it takes a little more effort to gain interest and to inspire engagement,” Steingraber said during a phone interview with DownBeat. “We’ve been doing it for a long time now, and all of the representatives and artists that we work with understand our seriousness in this area and what that has amounted to. So we get a lot of calls now.”
The Saroya also offers familiar classical, dance, Americana and global music bookings that one would expect to enjoy at a performing arts center. “We have the most extensive Spanish language series in Southern California. And our jazz performances are becoming a really significant part of our identity,” Steingraber noted.
Now in its fourth year, the annual Jazz at Naz winter festival features notable musicians in both Soraya settings. Running this year Feb. 1–20, it will feature performers such as Kurt Elling celebrating Weather Report with the Yellowjackets and special guest Peter Erskine on Feb.15, and Chucho Valdès and Arturo Sandoval celebrating Irakere with special guests Cimafunk on Feb. 20, both in the main hall. Lakecia Benjamin & Phoenix (Feb. 5–6) and Christian McBride & Ursa Major (Feb. 7–8) will perform in the Jazz Club.
“When I came in 2014, I was thinking, ‘You know what? We’re missing a whole segment of the jazz world.’ You don’t want to put a new jazz artist on a stage with 1,700 seats,” Steingraber said. “And you don’t want to put most trios in that setting. So much of jazz happens in a smaller, more intimate setting.
“So it took us a while to figure out the logistics of converting our stage into a jazz club a couple times a year,” he continued. “We do that by lowering the curtain and putting 220 seats on the stage turned sideways and then building a little platform stage on the end of that end of that space and creating a black box that’s literally a club.”
Acoustic and lighting considerations were worked out over a two-year period, as was fire marshal code adherence. Amir ElSaffar inaugurated the venue-within-a-venue in April 2018, and the concept has been refined from there.
“Since then, we’ve made it look a little fancier,” Steingraber said. “We’ve added full meal service and an open bar.” Patrons can order a pre-concert dinner catered by Chef Jim Bonanno from the nearby Humble Bee Bakery & Cafe.
Steingraber sees The Soraya’s mission on the jazz side as one to help grow the audience while giving musicians a top-shelf performance experience. “You get to a certain age in your life where you’re less likely to go to a club,” he observed. “Our audience wants a really nice parking space and large, clean bathrooms. And some of them need accommodations for walkers or wheelchairs. They come here because we have all of those accommodations.”
With 36,000 undergraduate and graduate students, CSUN has future concertgoers embedded on campus, according to Steingraber. “That’s a new generation of jazz audiences who literally walk from their class or their dorm to come to a concert,” he pointed out, noting that there are the existing patrons who attend other types of events.
“Perhaps someone came for a Mariachi performance, and they’re interested in Cuba’s adjacency to their own culture. So they check out Chucho because they’re already familiar with the setting,” he hypothesized. “Suddenly you’re reaching into audiences of other affinities and backgrounds and introducing them to jazz.”
Then there’s the decidedly 21st Century approach to reaching existing jazz fans and growing new ones: “We livestream our whole festival, and we know that’s part of what’s building our new audience,” he said, referencing Soraya’s paid digital subscription series. “And I love that we get to do a ‘pre-game’ and a ‘half-time’ and a ‘post-game.’” Steingraber and drummer Reggie Quinerly are co-hosts, interviewing the bandleader during intermission and chatting between themselves before and afterwards.
Delfeayo Marsalis, in discussing his experience as a guest artist at The Soraya, said he wholly supports this approach. “Any way that you can keep up with what’s going on in the modern times, it’s always a good idea,” said the trombonist/composer, who led his Uptown Jazz Orchestra at The Soraya last February. “If you look at the Tennis Channel, they weren’t doing analysis before the success of the TNT halftime show. Now, whenever there’s a major tournament, they have analysts giving their different perspectives.
“I think that’s a great idea to give people insights,” he continued by phone from a gate at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. “And it’s always a good idea to have different perspectives of what’s going on.”
“We get a lot of feedback that that is what’s helping instill curiosity and confidence,” Steingraber said. “And it takes those two things to become a patron of any art form: curiosity and confidence. With confidence, you feel you know just enough to not feel like a stranger in the room.”
Appreciative of local clubs and other presenters producing jazz concerts, Steingraber said he’s ultimately grateful to be able to provide an institutional jazz anchor northwest of downtown Los Angeles. “This isn’t a competition,” he concluded. “This is a community.” DB
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