3rd year! Students in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s “Roots, Jazz & American Music” Bachelor’s degree in music program host their peers from Bay Area colleges and high schools on the second Monday of each month.

Hear the fantastic talent of young musicians drawn from all over the country, and indeed, the world, as they blaze through the bebop and plumb gorgeous ballads plucked from the Great American Songbook… There’s no limit to the talent and the tradition, no fear of the future, in these kids. Catch them while they’re perfecting their craft, growing before your ears!

After 100 years as a strictly classical (broad as that may be) institution of higher education, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music brought in pianist and educator Simon Rowe in 2016 to create, develop and direct its foray into jazz education. The first freshman class arrived in the fall of 2017 and blew our socks off! Those kids are now juniors, and each year a new contingent arrives. Simon and assistant director Jason Hainsworth, a fine musician in the tradition of the great Texas tenor players, continue to build an amazing program, with a faculty that is nothing short of stellar. In the fall of 2020, the RJAM will enroll its fourth freshman class, making for a full house of undergrads! The future is bright!

We’ve been hosting this jam session on the second Monday of each month with the SFCM’s RJAM students since the program started, and their talent never ceases to amaze us. Brave souls from other college and high school programs around the Bay Area join them from time to time, hinting at the vast wealth of budding genius in our midst.

Click on this link to view an interview with Simon Rowe, Exec. Dir., SFCM RJAM Program

Simon Rowe

As luck would have it RJAM Executive Director Simon Rowe and his wife Kylie found a roost in Glen Park shortly after he arrived in town to start the program, and can often be encountered in the neighborhood cafes and market. In the early 1970s, just a young pup, Simon came over from Australia on his own to study music at the Houston High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, and after a few years back in Australia, immigrated with Kylie to America’s midwest to further his studies and career, deepening his jazz knowledge under such masters of the music as St. Louis saxophonist Willie Akins and others. For the five years prior to his SFCM RJAM appointment, he was Executive Director of the Brubeck Institute at the University of the Pacific, one of the nation’s premier jazz centers. We’re so pleased to have Simon and Kylie in the neighborhood, and so lucky to have the fine program developing under our ears at the SFCM.

Jazz is thriving in San Francisco in 2019!

No cover charge. Donations to support the bookshop that supports the students are very much appreciated.