SFJazz has brought some much-needed swing and clave to quarantine life with its Fridays at Five, providing loyal patrons with some reassurance that the beloved musical institution is going to make it through the coronavirus shutdown.
But it eventually had to take the same steps as countless other arts groups and address its pandemic-era financial situation. The nonprofit music presenter and educational organization, which had to cancel the remainder of its 2019-20 season as well as the San Francisco Jazz Festival and Summer Sessions, confirmed it is implementing two layoffs and 11 furloughs effective Friday, July 10.
The cuts are “pretty low, given that a significant part of our revenue has gone away,” SFJazz CEO Greg Stern told The Chronicle. “We used several tools in order to preserve as many jobs as possible.”
In addition to downsizing, reduced work hours and work sharing, there’s also a tiered salary reduction “meaning the higher-paid people took a bigger hit,” Stern added.
So the silver lining of the pandemic remains SFJazz’s Fridays at Five, which was in development well before COVID-19 hit the region but is providing the organization with some supplementary income during the ongoing public closures.
“Our digital platform was originally intended to extend our membership beyond the reach of people who can come to the building. With the crisis, Fridays at Five has become a communal gathering around the virtual fireplace for everyone who misses live music,” said Randall Kline, SFJazz founder and executive artistic director.
SFJazz had been working on the project for five years, Kline said, under the code name DiAna — a mashup of “digital” and “analog.”
“We invested a lot of time and research and energy and money to build the center a particular way,” he said about the planning that went into constructing the Hayes Valley venue, which opened in January 2013. “So DiAna was the idea of, ‘We’ve created this warm sense of community in the place. How can you translate that through a digital technology platform?’”
DiAna was set to premiere in the fall, but the pandemic prompted SFJazz to launch in just a week, said Ross Eustis, SFJazz digital projects manager. The series premiered March 20, making it both the first streaming series to be offered to the public by a local arts organization and now the longest-running one as Friday at Five goes into its fifth month of programming.
The streaming series has offered jazz lovers — from all over the Bay Area to as far out as South America, Europe and Asia — roughly hour-long edits of concerts filmed at SFJazz Center’s Robert N. Miner Auditorium over the past six-plus years. The live performance video feeds that are piped into the auditorium’s mezzanine and ground-level monitors during concerts serve as the basis for Fridays at Five. An average of eight in-house cameras capture the action with footage mixed live in a third-floor editing suite by SFJazz Video Production Supervisor Jake Drake, who also operates the cameras remotely. The blended visual style was inspired by a French TV broadcast of a 2007 Collective performance in Vienne, Kline said.
The online shows have featured the likes of saxophonists Kamasi Washington and Terrace Martin, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and vocalist/banjo player/Americana champion Rhiannon Giddens, among others, with guitarist John Scofield and the Millennial groove unit Lettuce up next. Each stream has attracted up to 3,000 unique log-ins — more than four times Miner Auditorium’s 700-seat capacity.
And patrons still get to mingle with one another, as well as with SFJazz staff and board members, via the live chat. Even performers and participants — including music legends Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, Snarky Puppy mastermind Michael League, and Pink Martini vocalists China Forbes and Timothy Nishimoto — have interacted with viewers to answer questions about musical gear, instrumental tunings, time signatures and stylistic influences.
In addition, the series has collected more than $250,000 in proceeds from an online tip jar, typically split evenly between that evening’s musicians and SFJazz’s educational and artistic programs with occasional special recipients. The June 5 concert alone raised a record $39,000, with half the amount going to Black Lives Matter and the other half going to the musicians — bassist-bandleader Marcus Shelby, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, pianist Tammy Hall, vocalists Tiffany Austin, Paula West and Kim Nalley — and special guest Angela Davis from that night.
Concerts by video will continue to be part of SFJazz’s membership portfolio when its doors eventually reopen for new live shows.
“I’m really pleased that we had enough digital wherewithal to make Fridays at Five happen and that there will be new products in the future,” said Don Derheim, who after nearly seven years as CEO of SFJazz passed the reins on to Stern last month.
“SFJazz will continue to find its new path after the virus lets up, and they’re going to be in good shape. It’s going to be hard, of course, but this is a strong organization.”
Fridays at Five: John Scofield with Lettuce. 5 p.m. Friday, July 10. $5 for one month/$60 annual subscription; free for SFJazz members. www.sfjazz.org/watch