For its fifth annual New Works Fest, San Jose Jazz is showcasing six Bay Area artists who will premiere an original composition at the SJZ Break Room.
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The artists in the festival are among 20 who received a 2025 Jazz Aid Fund grant to create an original new work. These grants are intended to provide unrestricted funds to working musicians and enable them to undertake projects that move their work forward. Since 2021, San Jose Jazz has provided 120 Bay Area musicians with $139,000 in grants and performance fees.
Leela Paymai opens the fest on Friday, Feb. 21, with her “Zheniia” project, which combines jazz and the Iranian traditional music she heard as a child.
“Similar to jazz, improvisation is an essential part of Iranian classical music,” Paymai said in a release. “These two genres, while seeming so different, blend together so well. Using a mix of ancient and modern instruments, I’ve found an outlet to express multiple sides of my musical upbringing.”
Paymai’s performance will feature Allison Irvine on violin, Chili Corder on oude, JC Grady on drums and Julian Lopez on keyboards.
Following “Zheniia” in the lineup is Ryan Trujillo’s New Beginnings Quartet on Saturday, Feb. 22. For the piece commissioned by SJZ, Trujillo took things in a different direction than his previous works.
“I think writing the song marked a shift away from established stylistic conventions and towards a new sound,” said the bassist. “The result is this melody-driven, minimalist thing that I really liked so I decided to continue writing. Exploring this direction, I wrote four very different songs that I will release as singles in the coming months.
“The SJZ New Works grant was perfectly timed and allowed me to expand the project budget and get video and artwork done in the process.”
Trujillo’s quartet features Jeff Goodkind on piano, John Macdonald on drums and Vaughn Cannon on guitar.
The New Works Fest continues on singer-songwriter Ben Henderson & Friends on Friday, Feb. 28.
On Saturday, March 1, Dana Salzman and her quintet perform funky originals. A graduate of the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City, Salzman has four albums to her credit.
Pianist Jon Dryden and his Quartet take the SJZ Break Room stage on Friday, March 7. Dryden has worked with Norah Jones, Questlove and David Byrne, and he composed and performed music for Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” and David Byrne’s “Finite=Alright.”
The fest’s final performance is by the Kai Eckhardt Band on Saturday, March 8. The German-born bassist played in John McLaughlin’s trio in the ’90s and has performed and recorded with Stanley Clarke, Wayne Shorter, Patrice Rushen and Larry Coryell. Eckhardt leads the UC Berkeley World Music Ensemble.
All SJZ New Works Fest shows start at 8 p.m. at the SJZ Break Room, 310 S. First St. in downtown San Jose. Tickets are $16.60 at https://sanjosejazz.org/tickets. Sets will be livestreamed for free at https://volume.com/sjzbreakroom/?selected_tab=shows.
