“One of the things that’s driven me is how much I respect the music and the artistry and the artists themselves,” says Randall Kline of the 40 years he’s spent developing and running SFJAZZ. The jazz, performing arts and nonprofit communities all seemed to gasp collectively on March 22 when SFJAZZ announced its founder and executive artistic director, Randall Kline, would be stepping down in November 2023.
Four days after SFJAZZ triumphantly produced and presented the 2022 NEA Jazz Masters Tribute Concert at its Center, Kline spoke with the Examiner in an interview that revisited SFJAZZ’s humble past, examined the Center’e role in the musical ecosystem and looked into his transformation from an independent player on San Francisco’s concert scene to founding and running a major performing arts nonprofit.
“The first big grant we got from the NEA was a program called Jazz Management, back around 1986,” Kline recalls by phone from his home office. “We received half of a salary for a development director, and at the time I viewed it as being the most important thing some three years into our existence. “You were assigned consultants to write your strategic plan, and that was our first-ever strategic plan,” he continues. “The statistic I remember them giving at the time was half of the organizations that went into this program did not come out of it, because it really made you take a hard, hard look at whether you had the right things to move forward.”
When the Center opened and was successfully received, SFJAZZ quickly adopted an ambitious calendar with over 500 concert offerings from September through May as well as during the San Francisco Jazz Festival and summer sessions between June and August. Among the thousands of concerts SFJAZZ has produced, there’s no lack of highlights. Candidates could include presenting both the 25th and 50th anniversary versions of Duke Ellington’s “Concert of Sacred Music” at Grace Cathedral in 1990 and 2015, to assembling an all-star sextet featuring tenor titans Joe Lovano, Branford Marsalis and Joshua Redman honoring living legend Wayne Shorter.
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