6 hours of smooth jazz takes over Olympia Saturday night

Saturday night, downtown Olympia will be a jazz maven’s Mecca.

The first Olympia Jazz Walk will host 15 bands at 11 venues — from Captain Little, Compass Rose and the Downtown Welcome Center to Rhythm & Rye.

The six hours of music include performances by nationally renowned bassist Essiet Essiet, Seattle vocalist Greta Matassa, and local favorites such as Joe Baque, Steven Bentley, Ariel Calabria, Steve Luceno and Michael Olson.

The jazz walk is a fundraiser for JazzClubsNW, a North Bend-based nonprofit that supports live performance and music education. In the past few years, the nonprofit has branched out to work with local organizations in Tacoma and Bellingham.

“Our motto is ‘More jazz everywhere,’ ” said Gregory Malcolm, executive director of JazzClubsNW. That mission includes supporting jazz in other communities as well as bringing performances into nontraditional spaces. “We’re trying to continue jazz as a living, breathing art form.”

The first Tacoma Jazz Walk, in March, brought a lot of attention to that city’s jazz scene, said Kareem Kandi, a saxophone player and composer and the director of the Tacoma Jazz Association, which partners with JazzClubsNW.

“A lot of people, whether they were jazz fans or not jazz fans, bought tickets and went to the venues,” said Kandi, whose trio will play Saturday night. “People are asking when it’s going to happen next.

“It brought the community together with jazz in a way that hadn’t ever happened that I know of in Tacoma, and I’ve lived here my whole life,” he said.

In North Bend, JazzClubsNW hosts two walks each year, one on jazz and the other on blues. The fundraising walks are a small part of the nonprofit’s activities.

JazzClubsNW hosts classes and concerts in the participating communities. Members get free access to concerts and to online recordings of all of the concerts in North Bend and Bellingham, and student members take classes and perform with professionals.

“It’s kind of a multilayered Little League jazz program,” Malcolm said. “I love the impact it’s had on our small town.”

The program draws visiting artists with national reputations. “We have a close relationship with Jazz at Lincoln Center, which is Wynton Marsalis’ group, because Mount Si High School in North Bend was selected as one of the top 15 high school jazz bands in the country,” Malcolm said.

Weekly jazz nights at Rhythm & Rye attract some famous touring players, and Olympia is home to many fine jazz musicians, but an association with JazzClubsNW could give fans more access to big names.

“The association can help local jazz scenes do things they couldn’t necessarily do on their own,” Kandi said.

At the moment, though, Malcolm and his colleagues are just beginning to get acquainted with local musicians and business owners. The Olympia walk is planned as an annual event, and in future, it will include more local musicians, particularly students, he said.

Plans for the walk came together quickly. Sal Leone of Woodinville, who owns both Fish Brewing Co. and North Bend’s Piccola Cellars, which hosts JazzClubsNW’s events, urged Malcolm to organize a walk here before summer’s end. That was in mid-June.

“I’d like Fish Brewing to be more culturally involved in the city,” said Leone, who played trombone in high school and college. “Doing a jazz walk just seemed like a natural fit.”

This story was originally published August 24, 2016 at 2:28 PM with the headline "6 hours of smooth jazz takes over Olympia Saturday night."