Quick Take
The Kuumbwa Jazz Center is marking its 50th anniversary with a number of events, including a "Spirit of '75" concert series, a big free outdoor show in the spring and a collection of archival and behind-the-scenes photos.
In the musical world of 1975, everybody was clapping along to “Thank God I’m a Country Boy,” disco and punk were both set to detonate and upend pop music history, and rock critic Jon Landau declared, “I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”
Also, a trio of jazz nerds in Santa Cruz, California, started a jazz society and gave it a name no one could pronounce.
Today, disco is positively antique and Springsteen is dad rock. But the Kuumbwa Jazz Center is a heart still beating in the live music scene of Santa Cruz.
As 2025 dawns, the Kuumbwa Jazz Center is poised to celebrate its 50th anniversary, an astonishing milestone for a club that has never strayed too far from its original plan to highlight the finest in jazz on the local scene and on the national horizon.
How will the Kuumbwa mark its 50th? Not with one big party, but by embracing the whole year.
On Feb. 6, the Kuumbwa launches its “Spirit of ’75” celebration, a quarterly series of live concerts featuring musicians with a prominent role in the club’s history. The first show will feature trombonist and longtime Cabrillo College music instructor Steve Wilson and his band. Three other similar shows are to follow in the spring, summer and fall, all carrying an advance and at-the-door ticket price of $19.75 (get it?).
“We’re looking forward to it being a yearlong celebration,” said Bennett Jackson, Kuumbwa’s creative director, “as opposed to picking one particular date or one particular event and focusing all the attention on that.”
The other three shows in the “Spirit of ’75” series have yet to be determined. But that’s not the extent of the 50th anniversary at Kuumbwa. On May 18, the Kuumbwa will be hosting a free outdoor concert on the Duck Island stage at San Lorenzo Park, just as it did every summer in the early years of its history.
In fact, the very first show presented by what was then known as the Kuumbwa Jazz Society was scheduled to be in San Lorenzo Park in the summer of ’75. But rain forced that first show indoors into what is now the London Nelson Center. The Kuumbwa Jazz Society produced a number of shows in different venues around Santa Cruz County before finally establishing the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in a former bread bakery on Cedar Street, where it still exists today.
On top of those shows, the Kuumbwa will be drawing from its archives to produce an art show of performance and behind-the-scenes photographs to display in the club, to be unveiled on May 2 during the First Friday art event. The Kuumbwa’s co-founder and longtime artistic director Tim Jackson will be on hand to reflect on Kuumbwa’s place in the greater Bay Area’s musical ecosystem with jazz vocalist and guest host Kim Nalley.
Bennett Jackson, who is Tim’s son, said Kuumbwa staff are now in the early stages of planning a bigger event featuring perhaps some of the most luminous names in jazz who have played the Kuumbwa stage over the years, to take place in the last quarter of 2025.
“We want to provide to the community at large with as many opportunities as possible to celebrate this anniversary with us,” he said. “And we’re going to make sure those opportunities encompass a broad spectrum of events.”
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