When veteran drummer Wally Schnalle hatched the idea for a band drawn from the faculty of San Jose Jazz’s summer education program, he had several motives in mind.
As the director of the SJZ Summer Jazz Camp since 2013, he saw an opportunity to deepen the already considerable camaraderie shared by his fellow teachers. He also wanted to showcase the South Bay’s deep pool of jazz talent. But he admits that his first thought in creating the SJZ Collective was to keep his calendar full.
“I’m a jazzer — I was hoping for another gig,” says Schnalle, who brings the sextet to Café Stritch Dec. 14 to celebrate the release of an EP featuring original arrangements of classic Thelonious Monk compositions, “ SJZ Collective Reimagines Monk .”
On every level, the plan succeeded beyond his fondest dreams. The Collective didn’t just land a few gigs. The musicians became global ambassadors for the Silicon Valley jazz scene, performing at major venues and events around Taiwan in October, including the Taichung International Jazz Festival and Blue Note Taipei.
In addition to Schnalle, the multigenerational Collective features trumpeter John Worley, saxophonist Oscar Pangilinan and bassist Saúl Sierra. Organist Brian Ho and guitarist Hristo Vitchev are also founding members featured on the Monk project, though at Café Stritch, their chairs will be covered by pianist Murray Low and guitarist Mason Razavi.
For Pangilinan, the band’s youngest member, the Taiwan dates provided his first taste of international touring. He’s hungry for more. “ I came off of it on a super high,” says Pangilinan, 34. “On the plane back, I was asking, ‘What are we doing next? Where are we going to go?’ I’ve been pushing to become an ambassador-type program for San Jose and do exchanges with other countries and other cities. I’d love to see us do this on an annual basis where we can go off and play festival worldwide and bring some of those groups back to San Jose. It’s win-win.”
The Collective debuted at SJZ’s 2017 Winter Fest, and its big break came up later in the year. At an international business conference in San Francisco, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo invited Taiwanese delegates to attend the annual Mayor’s Jazz Brunch at SJZ’s Summer Fest . With several jazz fans in the contingent, the Taiwanese showed up at the event, and San Jose Jazz executive director Brendan Rawson seized the moment.
“I said we’d love to connect with you guys,” Rawson says. “We have this SJZ Collective, and they’d be a great fit. I had just started a correspondence with the director of the Taichung Jazz Festival, and we were able to make it happen. Wally and Hristo added on Blue Note Taipei and turned it into a tour.”
Schnalle isn’t just interested in the glitzy high-profile gigs. Over the past five years, he’s been working to expand SJZ’s educational reach, conducting clinics in San Jose schools and creating opportunities for the faculty to perform together around the region.
Worley, one of the most esteemed horn players in the Bay Area, finds mentorship opportunities via SJZ and informally as an avuncular elder statesman who’s nurtured rising stars like vocalists Amy Dabalos and Ren Geisick.
“John has been a huge influence on all of the younger generation down here in the South Bay,” Pangilinan says. “I’ve seen him really engage with younger musicians in a way that not a lot of other players are doing. As long as you have conviction and musical integrity, he’s willing to work with you.”
A bona fide Bay Area all-star, Worley lent the Collective immediate gravitas and highlighted SJZ’s very different approach to sponsoring an ensemble than the organization’s bigger and higher profile neighbor to the north. Given the similar name and mission, it’s hard not to compare Schnalle’s crew to the SFJazz Collective, which draws from a national rather than regional talent pool.
Both ensembles generate repertoire by reimagining seminal jazz compositions by a selected composer (though SFJazz also commissions the musicians to write original works). TThere’s no sense of rivalry, as SJZ considered it a coup to present the SFJazz Collective a few months ago at the Hammer Theatre.
For Schnalle and SJZ, thinking locally and playing globally fits neatly into the organization’s mission. The drummer has big plans for next year, “when we’re going to do another reimagining project,” Schnalle says. “I thought, maybe Radiohead, but then no, we’re a jazz collective, so we’re going to do Mingus at Winter Fest.”
Interestingly, Charles Mingus is one foundational jazz composer that the SFJazz Collective hasn’t tackled yet.
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
SJZ COLLECTIVE
When: 8:30 p.m. Dec. 14
Where: Café Stritch, 374 South First St., San Jose
Tickets: No cover; 408-280-6161, www.cafestritch.com
