San Jose Jazz opens its Break Room for fall concert series
The SJZ Break Room will host 14 acts in downtown San Jose’s SoFA District for its 2025 Fall Series.
San Jose Jazz is bringing national touring artists and emerging jazz, soul and hip-hop artists to the SJZ Break Room, a popup located inside San Jose Jazz’s downtown San Jose offices. A group work space by day, the office can be transformed into a 100-seat venue in just two hours and boasts cabaret and lounge seating, a bar and state-of the-art video that is both livestreamed and projected on a 35-foot bank of windows to allow passersby to experience the music. Unless otherwise noted, shows start at 8 p.m.
The Marcos Varela Trio, featuring Liberty Ellman and Mark Ferber, opens the series on Friday, Sept 26. Hailed as a “top bass player in the industry” by fellow bassist Ron Carter, who played with Miles Davis, Varela sharpened his craft at The New School in NYC, where he now serves as a professor.
Jorge Luis Pacheco takes the Break room stage Saturday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m. Hailing from Havana, Cuba, Pacheco is a virtuoso pianist, singer, composer, percussionist and arranger. His music has been described as a confluence of Afro-Cuban and American jazz and classical music, with a measure of contemporary pop and soul.
Blue Note Records artist Paul Cornish plays jazz piano on Friday, Oct. 3, at 9 p.m. The Houston-based musician comes from a long line of alumni of the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts whose work is on the storied record label.
Canadian-born musician Anthony Fung is up at the Break Room on Sat, Oct. 4. S A drummer, composer, producer, and bandleader, Fung is an alumnus of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance and has performed at multiple international jazz festivals.
Ashni and Ambrose Getz perform Friday, Oct. 10. Getz is a singer and guitarist originally from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury and currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Her musical influences include Joni Mitchell and Becca Stevens; the latter musician is playing the Break Room the following Friday. Getz and her band will be followed on Saturday, Oct. 11, by the SLUGish Ensemble.
Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter Stevens blends pop, jazz, indie-rock, folk and world music with her classical and Appalachian roots. She’s known for her versatile vocals and mastery of multiple string instruments. She’ll perform on Friday, Oct. 17.
Trumpeter Dmitri Matheny will perform “Songs from the Silver Screen” on Saturday, Oct. 18. He and his band will play “ timeless classics from the shared history of jazz and cinema.”
Katalyst, a nine-piece band born out of Los Angeles. will play “contemporary instrumental” music on Friday, Oct. 24, combining sounds from all over the world with jazz.
Veotis Latchison—a songwriter, producer, and vocalist from Oakland—is “deeply influenced” by hip hop, R&B, soul and jazz. He’ll play the Break Room Saturday, Nov. 1.
Alex Hahn makes a stop on his “Reflections Tour” on Saturday, Nov. 15, for a show at the Break Room. An alumnus of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance and first-place winner in the Michael Brecker International Saxophone Competition, Hahn is a Grammy Award-winning saxophonist, composer and educator based in Southern California.
Saxophonist Kristen Strom has been a mainstay on the Bay Area music scene for nearly two decades. Her quartet performs at the Break Room on Friday, Nov. 21.
Bay Area jazz vocalist Stella Heath, known for her tributes to Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole, leads a quartet in “Stella Swings Ella,” a swinging homage to Ella Fitzgerald, on Saturday, Nov. 22.
Vocalist Ben Jones and pianist Laurence Hobgood close the series Saturday, Dec. 6. An alumnus of both Chanticleer and Beach Blanket Babylon, Jones was most recently seen off-Broadway in productions of Lissa Levin and Ron Abel’s “Twist of Fate” and Ray Roderick and Joseph Baker’s “Brooklyn’s Bridge.”
Shows in the SJZ Break Room Fall Series take place at 310 S. First St., San Jose. For tickets, visit sanjosejazz.com/tickets.