Irwin Jacobs, the founding chairman and CEO Emeritus of Qualcomm, is giving nearly $400,000 in seed money to help launch and sustain the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival through its first three years.
The inaugural Oct. 4-6 event has been designated as an “impact project” in the yearlong World Design Capital San Diego Tijuana 2024, whose goal is to showcase how cities united by their physical spaces, economies, and cultures can develop collaboratively and harmoniously.
The debut edition of the festival will open Ocy. 5 with a ticketed performance at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. It will be followed by free performances on a block of Avenida Revolucion in downtown Tijuana on Oct. 5, and at The Quartyard in downtown San Diego on Oct. 6. The Tijuana performance is a collaboration between top San Diego jazz impresario Daniel Atkinson and Tijuana Blues & Jazz Festival founder/director Julián Plascencia.
Noted jazz singer Magos Herrera will perform as part of the debut edition of the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival. A native of Mexico City, she is now based in New York.
(Dimitrios Kambouris)
Each venue will feature a borders-leaping roster of bands and solo artists from Mexico and the United States. The lineup includes Mexico City-bred singer Magos Herrera, Los Angeles pianist Gerald Clayton, Tijuana’s Nortec Collective, Guadalajara-born trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos (who is the San Diego Symphony’s jazz curator), Ensenada trumpeter and band leader Ivan Trujillo; and a collaboration by student musicians from the Castellanos-led San Diego Young Lions Jazz Academy and the Trujillo-led Instituto Contemperáneo de Música de Baja California.
Trujillo is also serving as an artistic adviser to the festival. On May 2 in Ensenada, he will be presented with the Jazz Journalists Association’s Jazz Hero Award by festival founder Atkinson. Trujillo is the first Mexican jazz artist in the association’s 38-year history to receive the prestigious award. He performed with is band in 2019 at the first Festival of New Trumpet Music West, a San Diego event co-produced by Atkinson.
The headliner at the festival’s Oct. 4 opening concert in Escondido will be a band led by acclaimed jazz drummer Cindy Blackman Santana. Her husband and frequent musical partner is Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Carlos Santana, who cut his teeth as a teenage guitarist playing in various Tijuana nightclubs. He is not a member of her band, but she is the drummer in his group, Santana.
Years in the making, the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival is the brainchild of Atkinson. He is the founder of San Diego Jazz Ventures, the nonprofit organization that is producing the festival, and is the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library’s longtime jazz program coordinator in La Jolla.
“It’s absolutely a dream come true to do this — I’ve had it in mind since 1988,” said Atkinson, who is also the executive director of the Western Jazz Presenters Network
“What makes working in the arts in San Diego the most unique is our position here on the border and the opportunities it opens up to collaborate with Mexico, which to me is an endlessly rich and fascinating source of creativity and cultural history. So, I’m thrilled to be able to proceed with this festival.”
Those sentiments are shared by Qualcomm founder Jacobs, a former avocational trombone player and clarinetist, and by Tijuana Blues & Jazz Festival founder Plascencia, a blues and rock guitarist.
Jacobs has long been a supporter of Atkinson’s jazz programming at the Athenaeum and a frequent attendee. Plascencia first collaborated with Atkinson on the 2018 concerts of jazz giant Charles Mingus’ “Tijuana Moods,” which were held at the Tijuana Cultural Center (CECUT) and at the Auditorium at TSRI in La Jolla.
“I’ve always enjoyed jazz, but I didn’t have much time for it until I came to San Diego (in 1966),” said Jacobs, a leading philanthropist who — with his wife, Joan — has given more than $100 million to the San Diego Symphony alone.
“Dan always does a very good job selecting musicians and staging concerts. I like the fact this festival will involve students from both sides of the border. And Joan and I are close to Gilbert Castellanos through the jazz concerts he does for the symphony.”
Leading San Diego trumpeter and Young Lions Jazz Academy founder Gilbert Castellanos will perform as part of the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival.
(Eduardo Contreras/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Jacobs donated $75,000 in seed money for the festival last year, followed by $100,000 more this year and an additional $200,000 that help fund the event’s 2025 and 2026 editions.
Other individual donors have pitched in to support the launching of the festival, which has received grants from the World Design Capital, the City of San Diego, and — under the auspices of the Burnham Center for Community Advancement — the National Endowment for the Arts.
“Irwin Jacobs has provided a major amount to make this year’s festival possible and he has made significant pledges for the next two years,” Atkinson said. “We’ve raised 75 percent of our $400,000 for this year and I am still working to secure the other 25 percent.”
Plascencia, whose family owns the historic Caesar’s restaurant in Tijuana, is especially pleased the festival will allow Tijuana and San Diego residents to interact with music as their common bond.
“We’re really, really excited to have a quality international event like this that will be held annually,” said Plascencia, whose family also owns the Tijuana live-music venue Praga Cafe.
“I think that, over time, other international jazz artists will become curious and want to come to play at the festival,” Plascencia continued. “And the binational flavor will help draw people to attend from California and beyond, as well as from Tijuana and across Baja.”
Tijuana’s Julian Plascencia, left, and San Diego’s Daniel Atkinson are teaming up to present the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival, which will debut on both sides of the border in October. They are shown on Tijuana’s Avenida Revolucion near the famed restaurant Caesar’s, which is owned by Plascencia’s family and this year celebrates its centennial.
(Alejandro Tamayo/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
That bi-national flavor will extend to more than just the location and talent lineup for the festival.
Aware that legendary jazz keyboardist and composer Jelly Roll Morton had lived and worked in Tijuana for a period in the 1920s, Atkinson has commissioned two works.
Internationally acclaimed pianist Gerald Clayton is composing a tribute to Morton that he will perform at the festival. Nortec Collective — the pioneering Tijuana electronic-music group — will present the world premiere the music-and-film work “Jelly Roll Morton in Tijuana.”
Nortec Collective and Atkinson have collaborated in the past, including a 2018 mjusic and film performance at Park & Market, UC San Diego’s downtown arts and cultural center. The group had embarked on what was supposed to be its farewell tour in 2015 but still performs periodically.
“The festival will have a timeline that goes back 100 years to Morton’s time in Tijuana, then forward to Carlos Santana, and beyond,” Atkinson said.
“That’s a fascinating trajectory to have. And I imagine that future editions of the festival will embrace other parts of Latin America, as well as Mexico and the U.S. That will always be a defining characteristic of what this event is meant to be.”
San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival
Oct. 4: Cindy Blackman Santana and her band; Magos Herrera & Aire with the Hausmann String Quartet; Gerald Clqyton’s tribute to Jelly Roll Morton; Gilbert Castellanos Sextet, featuring Gerald Clayton. California Center for the Arts. Escondio. $35-$150.
Oct. 5.: Nortec Collective world premiere “Jelly Roll Morton in Tijuana”; Magos Herrera & Aire, with the Hausmann String Quartet; Gilbert Castellanos Sextet, featuring Gerald Clayton; San Diego Young Lions Jazz Conservatory and Instituto Contemporaneo de Musica de Baja California Ensemble, and more to be announced. Avenida Revolucion between Calle Salvador Diaz Miron (4th) and Calle Emiliano Zapata (5th), Tijuana. Free.
Oct. 6: Nortec Collective’s “Jelly Roll Morton in Tijuana,” Ivan Trujillo Ensamble San Diego Young Lions Jazz Conservatory and Instituto Contemporaneo de Musica de Baja California Ensemble. Quartyard. Free; online registration required.
Tickets: On sale June 15 at sdtjjazz.org