‘Nuanced, rich, beautiful’: The story of the Kuumbwa Jazz Center – told through its pianos

Even if you consider the general vibe, drink prices, sight lines and parking options, there may be no more crucial element of a successful jazz club than its in-house piano. Unlike other musicians, who just carry along their favorite instruments with them from gig to gig, piano players almost always have to play on whatever the club provides them. Sure, Elton John was famous for transporting his customized grand piano wherever he performed, but … he’s Elton John. Nearly everyone else, including many of the finest classical and jazz players in the world, has to depend on the venue to have a suitable piano. 

As the Kuumbwa Jazz Center marks its 50th anniversary this year, it’s intriguing to trace the club’s rise from scruffy little Santa Cruz joint to nationally recognized jazz jewel through the progression of its pianos, just three in its long history. 

For a jazz club owner or manager, the logic is clear: A good piano makes for a satisfied artist who might decide to return to your club on the basis of the quality of your piano. A happy artist makes for happy audiences, and robust ticket sales. 

As for Kuumbwa, if you’re a fan of piano, there is simply no more golden time in the club’s 50-year history than right now. Kuumbwa’s current piano is a Steinway Model B, a seven-foot piano that lists around $115,000. The piano was purchased in 2020, shortly before the pandemic closed the club for a year and a half. A new piano will often require a breaking-in period in order to reach its full glory for both players and audiences. (The soft hammers striking the strings need to be compressed just a bit, which comes from playing, for the tone to reach its highest potential.) In a way, the pandemic delayed that breaking-in period such that the piano is really hitting its stride … right about now.

“This is the peak,” said Jeffrey Potter, the Kuumbwa’s piano tuner/technician.

It also marks a peak for the management of Tim Jackson, who has been the Kuumbwa’s executive director from the beginning, and one of its co-founders. Jackson is retiring this year, and the Steinway will remain one of his legacy achievements.

“I’ve yet to talk to a player who doesn’t like it,” said Jackson. “Some are going to love it more than others. But they’re all basically saying, ‘Thank you for having this piano.’ Some may qualify it. They might say that certain things about ‘aren’t my particular thing.’ But overwhelmingly, it’s been, ‘Oh, man, this piano is awesome.’”

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Kuumbwa Jazz Society, the small group of jazz lovers including Jackson, Rich Wills and Sheba Burney who first began to invite jazz players to town. The Kuumbwa Jazz Center itself, a rare non-profit jazz club, opened just two years later, in 1977. 

It’s first piano was a Kawai, less than 6 feet long, what Jackson called a “barely professional-level piano.” The Kawai was suitable for a small club trying to make a name for itself. Ten years later, the Kuumbwa graduated to a Yamaha which, along with Steinway, largely represents the industry standard in pianos. The Yamaha C7 was just a step below the company’s largest piano, at about 7-foot-6. (Larger pianos, generally, are able to fill up larger spaces with sound.)

One of the most prominent jazz pianists in Santa Cruz at the time, Smith Dobson, traveled to San Francisco with Jackson to pick out the Yamaha.

“Smith had a style of playing that was a very bright sound,” said Jackson. “He tended to play a little higher up the keyboard. And Yamahas have a reputation for having a brighter sound. So Smith loved it.”

Dobson was killed in a car accident in 2003, and Jackson, for one, has always associated Kuumbwa’s Yamaha as something of an embodiment of the ebullient spirit of Dobson. (The beloved late pianist’s daughter, Sasha Dobson, now an accomplished jazz singer in her own right, performs at the Kuumbwa on Nov. 13.) 

The Yamaha performed its duties for more than 30 years during Kuumbwa’s period of growth and helped it establish its reputation in the jazz world. But some time in the mid-2010s, piano technician Potter started hearing from many of the world-class musicians coming into Kuumbwa that the piano was getting “tired,” simply not as dynamic and alive as it used to be. Potter’s first impulse was to plan to refurbish the piano, perhaps restring it and install new hammers. But one piano player told him, “That’s great, but they’re just never as good as the potential you can get from a new piano.”

Unlike a violin, said Potter, a piano doesn’t generally get better with age. “Piano’s self-destruct,” he said. “The strings on a violin are low tension. There’s only four of them, and there’s not a lot of pressure on the box. So violins can be better sounding after 200, 300 years, as we all have heard. But pianos don’t do that. Pianos have 20 tons of string tension running across the metal plate. And then there’s five, six tons pushing down on the sound board.” All that tension, in time, has a diminishing effect on the piano’s tone. 

Soon Jackson knew he had to do something about the piano. He quickly dismissed the idea of rebuilding the old piano, and first thought of simply buying another Yamaha. “But the more I thought about it,” he said, “I just thought, f–k it, let’s just get the best. Let’s just go out and get a Steinway.”

Piano purists can argue the differences between Steinway and Yamaha. But in one vector, there is a dramatic difference. Steinways can be as much as double the price of Yamahas. 

Jackson’s next step was to look into purchasing a used Steinway. But an unsatisfying experience in that market led him to the inevitable conclusion. “It kinda hit me over the head,” he said. “We deserve the best. I’m going to find a way to get a new Steinway.”

Jackson got a couple of big breaks in his quest for a new Steinway. One was an enormous gift for just that purpose from one of Kuumbwa’s most stalwart donors, Brian and Patricia Herman. The other was an offered discount from Steinway. The sale of the old Yamaha and a fundraising effort eventually netted the $90,000 or so it took to close the deal.

At that point, Jackson and his wife, Lori, traveled to the manufacturing plant in New York City where Steinway has been making pianos since the 1870s. For the trip, he recruited four trusted professional players (and regular Kuumbwa performers), Gerald Clayton, Christian Sands, Aaron Goldberg and Benny Green (the latter of whom inherited Kuumbwa’s old Yamaha). He asked the Steinway people to gather together their six best new pianos — Jackson wanted the Steinway Model B, which was widely used in the classic Blue Note recordings of the 1950s — and then he sent in his pianist friends to test them all out. 

The four pianists represented a wide range of styles, from “swinging” players to more introspective and quieter players. They each independently played each piano. And, to Jackson’s surprise, they all chose the same one. Kuumbwa had found its Steinway.

The new piano arrived in Santa Cruz just a couple of weeks before the pandemic shutdown in March 2020. It was featured in just a couple of shows before it had to be mothballed for several months. By the summer, Kuumbwa was beginning to livestream programming from the club with no audience, and the new piano was finally getting what it needed, someone to play it.

“They reached out to some of the artists in the Santa Cruz community,” said technician Jeff Potter, “just to break it in a bit, which it needed. And then, once the pandemic ended and we got back to the regular schedule, the tone came up beautifully. I think it’s kind of in its prime right now.”

Jackson said that the piano is not as loud as the old Yamaha. But jazz players have been telling him they admire its richness of tone. The great Kenny Barron, who played the Kuumbwa earlier this year, told Jackson, “It’s got a softer sound than a lot of the pianos I’ve played lately, but it’s got a really nuanced, rich, beautiful sound.”

The new Steinway now becomes part of the legacy that Jackson is bequeathing to his successors as he retires, executive director Chanel Enriquez and creative director Bennett Jackson, Tim’s son.

“It’ll be there for the next 40 or 50 years,” said Potter, “sounding just as good.”

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