SFJAZZ Center Opens as Temple of Jazz in California

SAN FRANCISCO â€" “Congratulations,” Bill Cosby told a roomful of jazz patrons on Wednesday, near the outset of an opening-night concert for the SFJAZZ Center here. “This is your place, you know.”

The crowd, which filled the 700-seat Robert N. Miner concert hall, laughed appreciatively at Mr. Cosby’s line, which was no less welcome for being obvious. The SFJAZZ Center, a $64 million facility, proudly billed as the first standalone building designed for jazz in this country, was being consecrated in the presence of assorted board members, capital donors and series subscribers, all of whom had a stake in the project. But the concert, which was broadcast on radio by WBGO and WWOZ (and online by NPR Music), was also intended for a larger audience of jazz faithful, a global audience. If all goes as planned, this is to be their place, too.

SFJAZZ is celebrating its 30th season this year, and Randall Kline, its founder and executive artistic director, wanted the evening’s festivities to sowcase longstanding bonds. So the concert featured a preponderance of musicians who have history with the organization, including the tenor saxophonists Joshua Redman and Joe Lovano and the pianists McCoy Tyner and Chick Corea. Each of this season’s five resident artistic directors â€" the guitarist Bill Frisell, the pianist Jason Moran, the violinist Regina Carter, the percussionist John Santos and the alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón â€" had some integral part to play.

Several of the evening’s highlights were touched by serendipity. Mr. Corea and Mr. Frisell, who had never played together before, fashioned an exquisite duo improvisation on the standard “It Could Happen to You.” The bassist Esperanza Spalding played for the first time with Mr. Corea and the drummer Jeff Ballard. Mr. Tyner led a heavyweight quartet â€" with Mr. Lovano, Ms. Spalding and the drummer Eric Harland â€" in a version of his 1970s staple “Walk Spirit, Talk Spirit.” And Mr. Moran ! teamed up with Mr. Harland for a slyly abstracted take on Fats Waller’s “Yacht Club Swing.”

Naturally there were performances by artists from the area. The singer Mary Stallings, who grew up not far from the site of the new center, sang an arrangement of “I Love Being Here with You” with the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars, an education initiative. (Ms. Carter also played one song with the high schoolers, sounding effortless.) And Mr. Santos worked in several formats, including a percussion-choir version of Tito Puente’s “Ti Mon Bo.” (On timbales was Pete Escovedo, another important Bay Area fixture; on cowbell was Mr. Cosby.)

As for the SFJAZZ Collective, a justly acclaimed flagship band, it played two numbers: “Mastermind,” a metrically tricky piece by Mr. Zenón; and “Spain,” one of the best-known tunes by Mr. Corea, who sat in on keyboards. (Despite its name, the Collective now has just one member who hails from the region: Mr. Ballard, a native of Santa Cruz, Calif. Itsroster otherwise represents Israel, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and New Zealand, along with Philadelphia and Albany.)

The Miner auditorium, a steeply raked cube of a hall, offers a lot of promise right out of the gate: its sound is clear and warm from almost any vantage, and its seating plan gives an impression of intimacy even from the balcony. (The architect was Mark Cavagnero, and the acoustician was Sam Berkow; both are justifiably proud of their work here.) I’ll have more to say â€" about the development and design of the SFJAZZ Center, and about what it means for jazz culture in the Bay Area and beyond â€" in a critic’s notebook later this week. In the meantime, suffice it to say that this long-awaited enterprise is off to a bang-up start.