California Cool Jazz Live Concert Series

July 8th, August 12th and September 2nd, 2025

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The Music of Chet Baker, Clifford Brown, Hampton Hawes, and Art Pepper Interpreted by the Premier Musicians of Today

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KSDS Jazz 88.3 FM's California Cool concert series — celebrating the West Coast sound — runs throughout Summer 2025 in the beautiful outdoor courtyard of the Handlery Hotel. Presently, three (3) concerts remain.

A Dandy Line: Gilbert Castellanos Plays Chet Baker and Clifford Brown (July 8 | 7 p.m.)

Nationally renowned San Diego-based trumpeter and educator Gilbert Castellanos leads a musical tribute to the Chet Baker and Clifford Brown Ensembles. Backed by a world-class septet, Castellanos and co. will be playing the original charts prepared for those memorable Pacific Jazz recording dates by Jack Montrose, the celebrated arranger whose style epitomized the West Coast Sound.

Hawes and Effect: The Eric Reed Trio plays the Hampton Hawes Songbook (Aug. 12 | 7 p.m.)

Incorporating the bebop vocabulary of Charlie Parker and Bud Powell with a gospel-informed, propulsive vocabulary all his own, Hampton Hawes melded the headiness of West Coast cool with the visceral fire native to hard bop. Like Hawes, Los Angeles-based pianist Eric Reed was also a young piano prodigy who came of age, musically, in his father’s church. Just as Hawes played with Parker early in his career, Reed spent much of his early career playing and recording with his generation’s most celebrated (or at least highest profile) jazz instrumentalist, Wynton Marsalis, appearing regularly on Marsalis’s recordings throughout the 1990s. Still, even after stints with the most strong-willed employers, Reed’s aesthetic sensibility is as expansive as ever. So expect to hear repertoire from those beloved mid-century Contemporary trio recordings that immortalized Hawes — like Everybody Likes Hampton Hawes, All Night Session! and This is Hampton Hawes! — but expect to hear them presented through a distinctively Reed-ian lens.

The Art Pepper Centennial with Christopher Hollyday + Eleven (Sept. 2 | 7 p.m.)

Alto saxophonist and one-time Young Lion Christopher Hollyday leads a musical tribute to the late alto saxophonist Art Pepper just one day after Pepper would’ve turned 100 years old. Pepper’s life and career were marred by addiction, conviction, and incarceration, and, yet, you can’t have any serious conversation about the best post-Charlie Parker alto saxophonists without including Pepper. Pepper played music with equal parts facility and heart, self-consciousness and the urgency that attends compulsion. He played burners with the best and ballads with a vulnerability that left him so exposed as to communicate something simultaneously frightening and beautiful. Pepper was a true artist. And you’ll walk away from this one knowing the same is true of Hollyday who plays with a rare combination of athletic brilliance, humility, gratitude, and joy. He’ll be part of a twelve-piece band playing the original charts from 1960’s Art Pepper + Eleven, an album applauded for its moments of individual brilliance and orchestra-like cohesiveness and beloved for its innovative yet accessible arrangements (of tunes by Parker, Gillespie, Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, and Monk, et. al.) by Marty Paich.

Visit Handlery Hotel San Diego for more information about the venue.

For all dates, band lineups, and updated details, bookmark this page.

Questions? Call 619-388-3000 or email .