The great saxophonist Pete Christlieb - who performed at the Festival on Sunday, August 15 - answers to our five questions and tells us some memories he lived during his musical career that he could never forget .

"San Jose Jazz (SJJ): Tell us who you are.

Dennis Broughton, San Jose Jazz Festival Production Manager, picked with pep and excitation a Tower of Power's - a.k.a TOP or T.P - track  for our San Jose Jazz Tune of the Month. It seems that T.P has never failed to entertain!

"During the 70's when I went to music school,we were all so into T.P... JAZZ MEETS FUNK-OAKLAND STYLE!!

Why should you go to the  21st AT&T San Jose Jazz Festival? What do you enjoy there? Would it be for the artists? Musical discoveries? Fun? Diversity? Dancing?  Here, four music lovers  decided to write a few words about it.

San Jose Jazz chooses an artist, five questions (same ones each times) and five answers. Here, the jazz saxophonist Pete Yellin who leads his own group, the Pete Yellin Quintet, agreed to play by the rules!

San Jose Jazz (SJJ): Tell us who you are.

Pete Yellin (PY): I'm Pete Yellin, a saxophonist from New-York now living in the east Bay for years. I play the alto sax mostly. I started playing at the age of 17, on clarinet. I was listening to jazz music and some of my friends were playing in their school bands so I thought it would be fun to try and learn an instrument. I was a basketball player in high school and received a scholarship to Denver University. At D.U., I went out and heard Art Pepper play the alto sax at a local club and decided to try to learn the sax. So when the 1st year was up, I got a sax and a teacher (with help from my musician dad) and picked it up pretty quickly. My teacher was on the staff at Juilliard Conservatory and he helped me get accepted there. I met many serious musicians there and they helped me get "gigs" and go to rehearsals and jam sessions.

Bruce Labadie, Festival Director, chose our tune of the month! He tells us about his music crush, Ruthie Foster, how he discovered her and how she is such a powerful perfomer.

 
              "I was travelling to Austin to attend the South By Southwest Music Festival in the late 1990's and stopped by to visit an agent, Nancy Fly. She gave me a cd of a solo artists she had just started representing, and after listening to her I grew to like what I heard.

Geoff Roach, San Jose Jazz Executive Director,  picks our tune of the month! He presents the track, explains why he chose it and why, in a general way, it represents the San Jose Jazz Festival.

The Executive Director of San Jose Jazz, Geoff Roach, speaks about his take on this 2010 AT&T San Jose Jazz Festival's lineup and  his excitement as a jazz fan to participate in the event.

          " What I Like About The Festival Lineup,

Bruce Labadie, Festival Director, tells you more about the Festival stages: what to expect, their different vibes, the food... what you will experience besides the music.

            "Its difficult, when planning a festival of this size, to figure out how to position it in relation to other festivals. We've been lucky to year to have found some outstanding artists on each of our ten stages, and without a doubt have the best line-up of any previous year on our main stage.

            Each of the stages has its own personality: the Main Stage is more of a hang, with over 25 food booths, business and craft vendors and a wide expanse of lawn; the Blues Stage has some of the best barbeque available anywhere, and a corner lawn for the comfort of the audience; the Salsa Stage is non-stop dancing, craft vendors and plenty of Corona; the Latin Jazz Stage is the soul of the festival nestled on one of the historic streets of San Jose; at night the Latin Jazz Stage turns into Jazz Beyond, featuring electronica, hip hop and jazz for younger audiences; the Smith Dobson Stage at the Fairmont Hotel's Club Regent has straight-ahead artists from the Bay Area and Southern California; the Jazz At The Rep Stage is the site of national straight- ahead artists; the 48-Hour Jazz Club has a wide variety of emerging artists spread over the weekend; the Future of Jazz Stage includes youth bands from throughout Northern California. Finally, the Club Crawl features free performances in 15 clubs and venues on Friday and Saturday night from 8 until 2 a.m. 

Come, listen, enjoy."  

"Look for a massive funk attack on Friday the 13th to get things started: George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic turning the throngs in Cesar Chavez Park into one nation under a groove"... Richard Scheinin writes about the 21st AT&T San Jose Jazz Festival's lineup in the Mercury News.

               "The AT&T San Jose Jazz Festival is coming back for a 21st year, offering a weekend's worth of music Aug. 13-15 on ten downtown stages.

May 27-August 22, 2010
1320/1330 Fillmore Street, San Francisco

The Jazz Heritage Center (JHC), San Francisco's only permanent complex dedicated to jazz art and jazz history, is pleased to host an exhibit of the fine art work of Michael Rios. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, May 27 from 6:30-9 pm with the artist.

Michael V. Rios is a native of Oakland, California and graduate of the San Francisco Academy of Art College. Rios began as an illustrator for the San Francisco men's clothier, Roos Atkins and then became a partner in the commercial art and graphics studio, Winston, Rios & Brown.