How better to celebrate the 100th birthdays of jazz demigods Miles Davis (born May 1926 in Illinois) and John Coltrane (born four months later in North Carolina) than to build a festival around them? That idea inspired trumpet great Terence Blanchard and Coltrane’s son Ravi to launch a nationwide centennial tour in January.
It also inspired La Jolla Music Society (LJMS) Artistic Director Leah Rosenthal to craft a six-event jazz festival that brings Blanchard and Ravi Coltrane to San Diego (April 9), flanked by events featuring pianist Emmet Cohen (April 6–7), San Diego-born tenor saxophonist Brian Levy and his quartet (April 10), and saxophonists Joe Lovano and Melissa Aldana, pianist Nduduzo Makhathini, bassist Linda May Han Oh, and drummer Jeff Watts (April 11).
Though Rosenthal’s music education in Boston and Illinois focused on classical voice performance and her career on classical music (she previously worked with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), jazz exerted an early allure.
“My appreciation [for jazz] really began growing up in Chicago where the jazz and blues scene was strong,” Rosenthal shared in March. “I always saw jazz as this very hip, intellectual art form, something the ‘cool’ people listened to in moody venues, smoking cigarettes (back when you could).”
The trigger to explore this fascination more deeply came when she moved to San Diego to become LJMS’s artistic administrator. Confirming the availability of jazz artists for the Society’s jazz series, launched in 2006–2007 by then artistic director Christopher Beach, meant calling agents.
“Many of them, still some of the top managers today, didn’t just sell me artists,” Rosenthal recalled. “Those calls became learning lessons. We’d talk about their favorite jazz artists, the different genres within the jazz ecosystem, their most beloved albums and the rising stars. I listened, I learned, and a whole new musical language opened up to me.”
The popularity of LJMS’s jazz series prompted Rosenthal and LJMS to include at least two jazz offerings in its signature SummerFest chamber music festival. Jazz’s affinity for intimate venues influenced LJMS’s decision to include a 130-seat venue among the four performance spaces of its game-changing Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, unveiled in 2019. One of those spaces, The JAI, is particularly fitting for performing jazz, she said.
“The JAI has really established itself as an ideal venue for jazz,” Rosenthal said. “It allows audiences to experience some of the most incredible artists working today in a truly up-close and personal way, a special connection between artist and audience.”
LJMS’s first mini jazz festival in 2024, set to a piano theme and headlined by Herbie Hancock, was the natural outcome of this evolution. Rosenthal said the Society’s first priority was to offer a multiple-event festival, “something more meaningful and less one-off.” Neither jazz nor an annual cadence were initially committed to. But “seeing the excitement and success of the first festival, we realized there was something special here… Based on its overwhelming success, we’ve decided to continue that jazz focus moving forward.” This year’s Davis and Coltrane centennial represents “a clear statement of our commitment to presenting a mini jazz festival each year,” Rosenthal said.
How might it evolve? Look for a two-weekend festival in 2027, cross-genre experimentation like dance, and more audience-engagement activities, from local-artist performances to pre-concert lectures and panel discussions.
As for highlights of the upcoming festival, she denies having any “favorite children” out of the artists she booked. But “I’m a huge admirer of Terence, not just as an artist, but as a genuinely kind person,” she said. “To see him perform alongside Ravi, celebrating the legacy of his father and Miles Davis, will be a truly special evening.”
In jazz’s improvisatory spirit, Blanchard and Ravi Coltrane will not cover but “reimagine” (through Blanchard arrangements) Davis classics like “Flamenco Sketches” and “All Blues,” all from albums on which John Coltrane played, and offer a Blanchard original or two.
