5 classical and jazz concert picks in San Diego this fall

Samara Joy| California Center for the Arts, Escondido

Three-time Grammy winner Samara Joy recently announced a forthcoming album, "Portrait," and dropped the first single, an enchanting, rhythmic arrangement of "You Stepped Out of A Dream."

The young singer will bring her mesmerizing talent (and TikTok fame) to town to lead up to the new release. Her performances and recordings feature not just reimagined jazz standards, but a particular focus on off-the-beaten-path numbers, or crafting new lyrics for instrumental pieces.

In this excellent interview on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, you can hear Joy discussing everything from her musical influences like Sarah Vaughan to her grandparents' gospel choir — plus a handful of performances.

Shervin Lainez

San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival

This inaugural festival spans two countries across three days, bringing an all-star lineup of jazz, world and classical performers, including the Binational Youth Ensemble featuring musicians from the Young Lions Jazz Conservatory and Instituto Contemporáneo de Música de Baja California; Magos Herrera and the Hausmann Quartet performing her recent album "Aire"; Nortec Jazz Experience; Gerald Clayton; Sure Fire Soul Ensemble; Gilbert Castellanos and more. It's a chance to celebrate a broad range of quality regional jazz acts and consider the intersection of jazz within other music niches.

Each night, the performances are held in a different venue, with a ticketed show in Escondido to kick things off, followed by two free concerts. The first, in Tijuana, is a street festival on Avenida Revolucion, followed by closing night at Quartyard in San Diego's East Village.

Cortex: 'Troupeau Bleu' | The Observatory

There’s no denying that hip-hop was the catalyst that brought jazz and funk band Cortex to the mainstream. Even if you’re not familiar with Cortex, you’ve probably heard them sampled by MF Doom, Tyler the Creator, Rick Ross and other rap artists. In fact, Cortex’s 1975 album “Troupeau Bleu” has been sampled at least 142 times, according to Courrier International.

Cortex was founded in 1974 by bandleader and pianist Alain Mion and drummer Alain Gandolfini. The group has weathered a handful of changes and a series of reunifications over the decades.

For this tour, Cortex will play the "Troupeau Bleu" album in its entirety. Mion and the current lineup toured across North America earlier this summer, and added a string of U.S. and Latin American dates this fall.

Milan Kovacevic

La Jolla Symphony: 'Folk Forward: Seeger, Bartok and the Border'

To kick off their new season, the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus will perform a selection of classical music informed by folk traditions, featuring works by Joseph Haydn, Béla Bartók, Ruth Crawford Seeger and Tijuana composer Andrés Martín.

Seeger's "Rissolty Rossolty" is a delightful, bounding orchestral folk song completed in 1941. The American modernist is known for her prolific and academic approach to composition, and this song presents a series of interwoven melodies, instrumental voices and surprising twists and turns.

Martín's piece will be a U.S. premiere, and it chronicles the complicated legacy and lore of the Mexican folk hero Juan Soldado.

Arts & Culture

Composer Texu Kim's chemistry of home

Julia Dixon Evans

Listen • 13:28

Mara Baldwin

Sarah Hennies: 'Reservoir 2'

In November, Project [BLANK] presents another groundbreaking new composition from American composer Sarah Hennies, "Reservoir 2." Hennies' work delves into queer and trans identity, particularly as those identities are experienced in musical spaces. In 2021, Hennies spoke to KPBS about her composition "Contralto" that featured a filmed cast of trans women speaking fragmented lines from speech therapy texts — inspired by her brief experience with voice feminization therapy.

"I was thinking about the social condition of never having your own space," Hennies told me in 2021.

"Reservoir 2" is about the untapped caverns of the mind as a space to hold and contain memories. This new composition is for choir and flute, and in Project [BLANK]'s local staging, they're incorporating a light and video work of visual art from artist Allison O. Evans. Local experimental choir San Diego New Verbal Workshop and flutist Teresa Diaz de Cossio will perform.

San Diego's best arts and culture this fall

This fall, discover our picks for the best art and culture in San Diego, including visual art, theater, dance, music and literature — and even some picks for kids.

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