If we weren’t part of your life, there’d be no sense in asking. But we know that we are; we see you, we hear you, we know you. And you know us.
That’s rare these days, in the era of Amazon and digitally delivered entertainments. If we’re old fashioned, it’s not in the manner of mustachioed hipster bartenders who call themselves “mixologists.” Rather, it’s in the spirit of Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer and John Coltrane. We won’t be held hostage by the political fads and fixations of the moment. After 50-plus years, we, like Kern and Mercer, know that this year’s fancies are passing fancies.
How are we so confident? Because we have you.
Not fancy corporate underwriters or massive charitable trusts who give with strings attached, but you. Our members, who give unconditionally. Because you already know that your support affords us the miraculous ability to bring you the kind of substantial, artistically significant music that commercial radio, TV, and concert promoters will never deem financially viable — the kind necessary for a nourished soul.
The music and history we showcase isn’t designed to be the carrot that gets you hooked on a worldview, a political value meal or any bundle of consumer goods…except for maybe a KSDS membership, some cool station SWAG, expertly curated local and national programming, and world-class live concert events.
If you’ve joined us for any of the dozens of live music events we present every year, you know this description is no exaggeration; “world-class” might actually be underselling it.
During the next few days, we’ll be asking for your support during this emergency donation campaign. I don’t begrudge anyone who’d ask “why?” If I were on the outside looking in, I’d ask why, too. Some of my colleagues might answer: “To Save us” — which, yes, sure, of course. Without your support, our jobs — this radio station itself — are in jeopardy. But, to me, that’s not convincing enough. I’d tweak that a little and ask that you support us to save the kinds of moments we’re proven ourselves capable of bringing you time and time again.
Here’s a sampling, accompanied by a brief recap, of the live concert events we’ve been able to present over the last 18 months:
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January 2024: Sketches of Spain
January 2024
The perfect kickoff to 2024 featured Gilbert Castellanos fronting the KSDS Jazz Orchestra and playing Miles Davis and Gil Evans’s original Sketches of Spain. From the moment we announced it during our Fall 2023 Membership Drive, demand for tickets to this event was unceasing. So much so that we changed venues to accommodate an overflow audience. San Diego's own Tamara Paige conducted the KSDS Jazz Orchestra as they played Gil Evans’s original orchestrations. Paige and featured soloist Castellanos delivered an inspired treatment, and, aided by the orchestra, were supplied with the horsepower to pull it off with all the passion and intellect this celebrated music calls for. Even Miles was pleased — Miles Evans, that is. An accomplished musician in his own right and perhaps the ultimate interpreter of his father’s music, the younger Evans sat in the audience, nodding approvingly at this elegant musical monument to his father’s collaboration with his namesake, Miles Davis.
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February 2024: The Gospel of Ravi
Ravi Coltrane’s performance at the Saville Theatre on Valentine’s Day 2024 was a transcendent concertgoing experience we here at KSDS are still talking about over a year later. Once-in-a-lifetime type stuff. From left: drummer Tony Austin, saxophonist Doug Webb, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, and bassist Eric Revis.
To culminate our month-long celebration of ‘The Coltrane Legacy,’ we welcomed the second of John and Alice Coltrane’s three children, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane. From the first tune, a deconstructed, fun-house-mirror “Body and Soul,” with Ravi and fellow tenorman Doug Webb crossing streams like a couple of gleefully transgressive Ghostbusters, it was apparent that Ravi was in great form. His tone was rich and full when he wanted it to be and spare and hoarse when he wanted it to be. He had the tenor on a string all night, and the fire in his playing belied the soft-spoken, outwardly gentle manner in which he presents himself.
The camera captured Ravi Coltrane bathed in a reddish light as he ran himself through the emotional and physical crucible of a medley of tunes from his dad’s “A Love Supreme.”
Ravi playing his father’s music — “Giant Steps” and “Resolution” from A Love Supreme, and “Central Park West” — delivered the goods, those “moments” every audience hopes for but can’t ever take for granted. As Ravi soloed on his father’s tunes, he nodded to his father’s ideas in passing but spoke for himself. When feeling a note or phrase acutely, he’d bend forward at the knees, sometimes at the waist. You see a man who is Alice Coltrane’s son. He does chair pose; he does forward fold. Watching Ravi Coltrane play is not unlike watching an Orthodox Jew pray at the Western Wall. He davens. It’s music, of course. But something…grander, like an exorcism. Part performance. Part exercise, with some sort of catharsis as a goal.
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May 2024: The Roy McCurdy Quartet
Take a look at Roy McCurdy, consider his age, watch him play drums for 90 minutes, then come tell me you don’t believe playing the drums helps you live longer.
Living legend. The 87-year-old cuts the figure of a fitness instructor and he probably burned enough calories playing drums on this night to qualify as one. Bill Cunliffe, among the most celebrated jazz composers and arrangers of this or any time (and a real mensch, to boot), was scintillating on the piano and Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra mainstay Ricky Woodard proved time and again why he remains one of LA’s first-call tenormen. But the treat of the evening was watching the interplay between the young bassist Mike Gurrola — another of the brightest stars in the Clayton-Hamilton orbit — and the venerable yet ageless master. When you speak the same timeless language, age really is just a number.
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July 2024: The Four Freshmen
Three cheers for continuity. The 27th version of the Four Freshmen and the vocal harmonies are as tight and enchanting as ever.
A verdant outdoor courtyard proved the pitch-perfect setting for vocal jazz on a summer night. The 27th iteration of the vocal quartet that inspired Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys left no doubt as to why their popularity endures. The group’s fan following is massive and spans generations. And their arrangements and musical sensibility continues to appeal to contemporary musicians like Emmet Cohen; the Freshmen recorded a fantastic album with Cohen’s trio in 2022. On this night, they did their forebears’ proud, proving to be worthy torchbearers of this eight-decade legacy. Their trademark four-part harmonies continue to define what classic means to so many people — yet, in person, they hit as fresh and innovative and somehow nostalgic all at the same time.
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September 2024: Bud’s Powell Centennial
From left: Alan Broadbent, Joshua White, Gilbert Castellanos, and Bill Mays talk with KSDS General Manager Ken Poston ahead of Sept. 2024’s celebration of Bud Powell’s Centennial at the Conrad in La Jolla.
Jaws were on the floor. Joshua White’s epic interpretation of Monk’s “Round Midnight” was one of the most powerful, mesmerizing solo piano performances those assembled at the Conrad’s Baker-Baum Concert Hall had ever witnessed. Alan Broadbent’s dreamlike, decadently textured reimaginings of Bud Powell’s catalogue unlocked layers to Powell’s music most couldn’t have previously imagined. Bill Mays’s unalloyed joy and unrestrained physicality at the piano was the perfect ebullient foil to Broadbent’s infinite layers of musical introspection. A masterclass in musical dynamism, sonic diversity, and the myriad ways to communicate the compositional brilliance of a master. The moments those artists created in that hall — that’s the supernatural stuff this music allows you to touch, if just for a moment.
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October 2024: The ‘Dizzy for President’ 60th Anniversary Concert
From left: Charles McPherson and Jon Faddis. A portrait of two legends leaving it all on the bandstand. Brotherhood, fellowship, respect, deep mutual admiration.
The Jon Faddis/Charles McPherson Quintet Feat. John Clayton. THREE (3) GOATS. One bandstand. One night to make politics swing again. Celebrating the 60th anniversary of Dizzy Gillespie’s run for president of the United States, a campaign that, while mostly a kibbitz, tapped into Dizzy’s legendary sense of humor to direct attention to the issues of economic participation and increased access thereto for African Americans that Gillespie considered to be the most important underpinnings of the Civil Rights Movement. A truly intergenerational band, with Sam Hirsh on piano, Kevin Kanner on drums and San Diego-based trombonist Matt Hall guesting on a tune so that he might play alongside Faddis, his mentor and professor at SUNY Purchase. Generation to generation. Past, present, and future. This night captured the truest essence of our mission...and a bit of our sense of humor, too.
Alex the Intern whipping up votes for Dizzy for President.
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April 2025: Saxophonist Doug Webb Kicks off ‘California Cool’ Series with Musical Tribute to the Original Gerry Mulligan Tentet
The Doug Webb Tentet playing the music of Gerry Mulligan in the inaugural concert of KSDS’s California Cool series.
Doug Webb Jazz doesn't play a ton of bari sax on his records, which explains why so many of us were left awestruck after this performance. We didn’t know he had THAT in his bag! Gerry Mulligan was done justice. As were his classic 1953 arrangements for tentet and quartet. Nothing better than having the high of a great live music experience usher you so into spring so completely that by the time it’s concluded you’ve forgotten winter entirely. The transactional nature of our world, no matter the era or political administration, will always test the spirit. But music is medicine. It may even be THE medicine. Jazz and community: the antidote to existential exhaustion and resignation. With only beneficial side-effects and pleasant hangovers.
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May 2025: Swing’s the Thing! Celebrating the Terry Gibbs Dream Band with The West Coast Jazz Hour Big Band Feat. Chuck Redd
Swing is more than A thing; it’s THE thing.
Mel Lewis, who anchored the group on drums before co-leading his own legendary orchestra with Thad Jones, once said THIS about the Terry Gibbs Dream Band: “I don’t think there was ever a better band than this one, including my own.” On this night, the West Coast Jazz Hour Big Band led by drummer Kevin Van Den Elzen and pianist Josh Nelson invited a very special guest, vibraphonist Chuck Redd — who’s toured the world with Dizzy Gillespie, Barney Kessel, Mel Torme, and Gibbs himself — to join them in honoring a mentor, colleague and friend… the vivacious vibraphonist and brilliant bandleader Terry Gibbs. In a pre-show Zoom interview conducted by KSDS GM Ken Poston, a 100-year-old Gibbs, wit and memory as sharp as ever, regaled the audience with great stories about Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw, and introducing a young pianist from Detroit named Alice McLeod to John Coltrane.
The mini vibes battle between Chuck Redd and San Diego-based up-and-comer Ian Harland was the emotional and musical highlight of the night; it was as though you were privy to an intergenerational conversation between Terry and Chuck and Ian. Magic!
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July 2025: The Gilbert Castellanos Sextet
From left: Trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos, tenor saxophonist Brian Levy, alto saxophonist Christopher Hollyday, and baritone saxophonist Nick Caldwell.
A packed house on a picture perfect evening gathered in the outdoor courtyard of the Handlery Hotel to see and hear the Gilbert Castellanos Septet honor Clifford Brown, Chet Baker, and those devilishly tricky arrangements Jack Montrose wrote for the Brown and Baker-led ensembles of the 1950s. Highlights abounded but the spirited measure trading from the saxophone section — Brian Levy (SDSU’s director of jazz studies) on tenor, Christopher Hollyday (the one-time Young Lion) on alto, and current Juilliard student Nick Caldwell on bari sax — simultaneously sent the crowd into a frenzy and compelled the sax players in the audience to toss their horns into the nearest river.
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For those of you who’ve already taken that step to join us as members and at our live events, thank you. If we could ask just one more favor, it would be to share your account of these experiences with a friend, with several, with your acquaintances at work or at the gym or in line at CVS.
When Congress voted to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (from which we otherwise would have received $200,000 in operational funding via their Community Service Grant program), they may not have envisioned independent public music broadcasters in their crosshairs, but they didn’t care either; we might as well be invisible to them.
But that doesn’t matter to us, not at all — because you see us, and we see you.
