The Los Gatos Saratoga Big Band is celebrating its 20th anniversary with an Aug. 10 performance at San Jose Jazz Summer Fest.
The band is a jazz ensemble that features about 17 performers on instruments ranging from the saxophone to the piano. Founders Jerome Nehemiah, Mike Bottini and Mark Schwartz put the group together in 2004.
The band has been performing at Summer Fest for a number of years. This year’s gig is at 1 p.m. on the San Pedro Square Swing Stage at 87 N. San Pedro St. in downtown San Jose. The group will be playing some traditional big band pieces and more modern tunes with vocals, Nehemiah said.
“I’m very, very thrilled with the band,” he added. “We have a great bunch of people, they’re very dedicated and serious about music, and the band musically has gotten better over the years in terms of the level of musicianship that we have. It’s a great endeavor.”
The group today doesn’t look too different from the way it did two decades ago, with Nehemiah and Schwartz still at the helm and a handful of other members who have been involved since its inception. And it has leaned into its identity as a community band instead of a professional one, as a registered nonprofit organization that works to put the limited funds it earns back into the community.
“We have a bunch of really dedicated musicians who never get a dime for donating their time and their efforts to enhance the enjoyment of music in the community at large,” Nehemiah said. “I think that that’s a very unusual culture for a band, and I think it’s just fantastic.”
The group has witnessed some change over the years, especially as pandemic-related gathering restrictions made it difficult for the big band to gather at its usual practice spots in local schools’ music rooms.
Though practices are now held in a studio in south San Jose and band members come from all over the South Bay, Nehemiah said the group has endeavored to maintain its West Valley roots and hopes to perform at more events in the area in the coming months.
“We still consider ourselves the Los Gatos Saratoga Big Band because those are our roots, and we would like to come back to make Los Gatos our home again in terms of rehearsing,” Nehemiah said.
The 34th Annual San Jose Jazz Summer Fest is set for Aug. 9-11 on numerous outdoor and indoor stages in downtown San Jose. For tickets and the full festival lineup, visit summerfest.sanjosejazz.org/buy-now.
