Here and there around the Bay Area, shows are still happening — with some obvious changes to the usual live-music experience. Here's what it was like for our photographer Jon to experience Jazz Mafia's Cosa Nostra Strings' new "Pod Patio" series, performed in a backyard in Oakland and livestreamed to YouTube. This week featured Lilan Kane on vocals.
Seats for you and your pod at future concerts will be raffled off weekly — keep an eye on Jazz Mafia's Instagram for more info.
By Jon Bauer
“The first thing to know about Cosa Nostra Strings isn’t that the group evolved out of the Jazz Mafia. The quintet does share a good deal of creative DNA with the ever-morphing Oakland collective that’s bootstrapped its stylistically omnivorous aesthetic into a booming cottage industry, collaborating with everyone from racy cabaret productions and soul belters to symphony orchestras and socially conscious hip-hop MCs.
Whatever its mob ties, Cosa Nostra belongs to a larger, more powerful subterranean family of musical renegades. The group, which released a self-titled album featuring original compositions on the artist-run San Francisco label Slow & Steady last month, builds directly on the region’s rich history of string innovators.”
Bay Area–based Jazz Mafia has released a new version of Stevie Wonder's more-relevant-than-ever 1974 hit calling for change. Look for guest verses and a socially distanced video performance. Read More
Though originally directed at President Nixon, Stevie Wonder’s 1974 hit “You Haven’t Done Nothin’” has undergone plenty of renewed relevance over the years. It’s one of Wonder’s angriest songs, and now, during an onslaught of lip service and woke theatre from corporations and politicians, it hits especially hard (read more)
The Mercury News gives a tour of all the BRAND NEW videos we've been producing and posting – a BIG THANKS to all the musicians and talented videographers and recording engineers involved in these projects and sessions! Grateful to journalist Andrew Gilbert for highlighting this while we're all sheltering at home.
“The confederation of Bay Area musicians has long made savvy use of video... More than a welcome dose of funk and soul, the flood of videos posted on the Jazz Mafia YouTube channel offers hours of spirit-lifting diversion.”
Jazz Mafia was voted “Best Band” by East Bay Express’ Best of The East Bay reader poll!
The Bay Area is no stranger to audacious endeavors that fly in the face of common sense. But even in a region where an idea can take flight and transform an entire segment of the economy, trombonist, bassist, arranger, composer, and Jazz Mafia collective founder Adam Theis had little reason to hope that an ambitious jazz/classical/hip-hop mashup would have wings.
It’s not just that creating and presenting 2009’s audacious Brass, Bows & Beats, a suite for a 50-piece ensemble, required overcoming Sisyphean logistical and financial hurdles. Theis had an expansive network of musicians to draw on, but with the economy still on the ropes after the pummeling of the Great Recession, he could have easily faced a serious Jazz Mafia beatdown. In his corner there were major grants from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode and Hewlett Foundations, and a partnership with SFJAZZ.
“What makes the Jazz Mafia such a potent brand is that Theis has attracted a disparate constellation of talent that touches just about every corner of the Bay Area music scene... While Theis is the guiding spirit, the Jazz Mafia is a confederation that has evolved in a multitude of directions driven by the creative impulses and opportunities created by different members.”
Flux is the only constant in life, and, in San Francisco, for better or worse, change sweeps aside familiar settings with merciless efficiency. There are few better antidotes for vertiginous disruption than a pulse-quickening riff, a seductive melody or a buzz-inducing groove. Above and beyond the essential role musicians play in making civilization civilized, they stand athwart capitalism’s churning creative destruction, providing an oasis of sonic succor. Each night, all around the city, musicians gather for weekly residencies in clubs, bars, restaurants and lounges, establishing a beachhead in the eternal struggle against alienation and entropy. However, regular gigs don’t tend to get much attention. The glitzy one-offs, the concerts featuring a touring act plugged into the ravenous corporate music biz, grab the limelight.
“Trombonist/bassist Adam Theis, the co-founder and godfather of Jazz Mafia, has spent nearly two decades as a creative catalyst working in the Bay Area’s musical trenches, and he’s played in just about every kind of venue imaginable.”
Adam Theis’ genius for community building is right there in the Jazz Mafia moniker he chose for his polymorphous musical collective.
It’s a brilliant bit of marketing, lending a dash of bad-boy attitude to a style often perceived as academically cloistered. But what makes the name work is the ironic intention.
As an organization governed by a radically embracing ethos, the Jazz Mafia is the antithesis of a criminal enterprise. A trombonist, bassist, arranger, composer and inveterate band-builder, Theis seeks to welcome all comers stylistically and demographically, while the band makes the most of whatever it has to offer. It’s a conspiracy of generosity.
Trombonist, people connector, entrepreneur and scene inventor: Adam Theis is all those things. A one-man Bay Area music industry for 20 years, he is founder of the loose-knit collective known as the Jazz Mafia – dozens of musicians participating in the umpteen bands that have sprouted from Theis’s renegade brain. Lately, he’s been jumping on his skateboard while practicing his trombone, improvising off the rhythms of the board’s wheels as he rolls up and down a ramp in downtown Oakland: “Something will be developing out of that,” he says. “Maybe a band, maybe a song.”
“As an organization governed by a radically embracing ethos, the Jazz Mafia is the antithesis of a criminal enterprise. A trombonist, bassist, arranger, composer and inveterate band-builder, Theis seeks to welcome all comers stylistically and demographically, while the band makes the most of whatever it has to offer. It’s a conspiracy of generosity.”
It was as easy to become dizzy watching Adam Theis perform as part of The Soiled Dove extravaganza in Uptown Oakland last month as it was witnessing the production’s aerialists and acrobats do their magical thing. In his role with the throwback alternative circus that is hosted by the Vau de Vivre Society, the multi-instrumentalist led two separate bands — one for the dinner show and another for the production itself — while acting, switching between trombone and bass guitar, and even riding a skateboard momentarily.
“With nearly a dozen different bands under its musical umbrella, Jazz Mafia units have encompassed styles ranging from hip-hop, jazz, and R&B to classical, rock, and electronic.”
The original music Adam Theis and his grooving Jazz Mafia associates created for the Soiled Dove, the ribald circus that’s been playing to sold-out crowds under the big top in downtown Oakland, will take on subtler shadings when it’s performed in the small-scale setting of SFJazz’s Joe Henderson Lab.
“We’ve been playing these tunes for two months and the band is just on fire,” says Theis, the trombone-and-bass-playing composer and arranger who co-founded and directs the Jazz Mafia crew.
“Jazz Mafia’s trademark mix ’n’ mash of funk, hip-hop and jazz embraces the genre-crossing tradition of great Bay Area bands like Tower of Power and Santana.”
Adam Theis is one of those Bay Area music scene figures whose cup runneth over with so much talent, you've likely heard him without realizing it. He's the founder of the locally beloved collective Jazz Mafia; has co-written songs with Blackalicious, Zion-I and Lyrics Born; and performed as a sideman with KRS One, Booker T. Jones and J Boogie's Dubtronic Science. One time, in 2009, Stevie Wonder crashed one of his shows at an intimate club in the Mission district and performed two songs with his band. He's that good.
Witness aerial and pole dancers, hula hoop and trapeze performers, shimmy and twirl to the flowing sound arrangements of some of the most talented Bay Area musicians and Djs.
Sunday Skool is a new monthly series launching this Sunday that will bring notable artists in the local music, dance and entertainment industries to a single place—The Great Northern. Created by Jazz Mafia, the music collective led by Adam Theis, and Vau de Vire Society, the event promises to be an immersive experience fusing hip-hop, rap, indie and electro music with a burlesque extravaganza.
“Performing with the Jazz Mafia is always great. Great musicians, great sensibilities, great performances. As deep music aficionados, we always end up performing rarer pieces—songs I almost never do live. It makes the performances special and singular. This show is no exception. ”
Jazz Mafia, led by Adam Theis, performed Miles Davis' Birth Of the Cool at The SFJAZZ Center on Friday night. The sold-out crowd was treated to an hour of this "musical experiment" masterpiece that was made in the '40s and '50s by jazz greats like Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan, and John Lewis.
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Acrobatics, corsetry and mustaches, oh my! San Francisco's newest dinner theater is busting out the big acts for patrons who like a good spectacle.
The Soiled Dove, presented by the Vau de Vire Society of The Edwardian Ball and New Bohemia NYE, bills itself as "an immersive, circus-infused dinner theater set in San Francisco's notorious Barbary Coast red light district." And immersive it is with gravity-defying acts that take place among and above the audience accompanied by stage performances and live music from Jazz Mafia and Realistic Orchestra.
Patrons can also expect a four-course dinner, prepared by Work of Art catering, with dishes like short ribs with asparagus, corn and mashed potatoes. (Vegan options are available upon request.)
The dinner show is on its second run in San Francisco after multiple sold-out performances in December; it runs through April 4. Get a sneak preview in the photos above.
The Realistic Orchestra plays live in collaboration with visual artist Joe Caseand aerialist Amanda Boggs at the premiere of the Treat Street Social Clubon March 27, 2012.
Adam Theis is the Jazz Mafia guy, always a little bit different. Watch him on YouTube wailing on his trombone — while wake surfing on Lake Sonoma. Or directing his band Supertaster, while backing Stevie Wonder in a packed San Francisco lounge. And then marshaling his troops onstage at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre: 55 rappers, singers and instrumentalists, performing one of his hip-hop symphonies.
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Check out this video montage of the Jazz Mafia celebrating their 12 Year Anniversary with a kickin’ live show at the historic Fillmore in San Francisco on November 18, 2012. It was such an epic show!
Photographs from the first show of the Jazz Mafia’s multi-night run of their Symphony No. 2 “Emperor Norton Suite” live at Yoshi’s San Francisco on November 3, 2011.
