{"id":475715,"date":"2026-09-25T21:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T21:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/475715\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T21:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T21:10:10","slug":"beyond-borders-with-founder-of-the-san-diego-tijuana-international-jazz-fest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/475715\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond borders with founder of the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Fest"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Four<\/a>The Binational Youth Ensemble performs. (Photo by Manuel Cruces Camberos)<\/p>\n

The San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival isn\u2019t the region\u2019s biggest music festival, but it might well be the most interesting and innovative. Set for Oct. 1-4 with two days in Tijuana, one in San Diego and one in Escondido, it\u2019s a fascinating cross-cultural event<\/a> that features prominent jazz musicians from the region and beyond.<\/p>\n

The fest is largely the brainchild of San Diego Jazz Ventures executive director Daniel Atkinson<\/a>, who started the Athenaeum Jazz series at La Jolla\u2019s Athenaeum Music & Arts Library 30 years ago. \u201cI always had it in the back of my mind that I\u2019d love to do a festival,\u201d Atkinson says.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the pandemic, Atkinson renewed his efforts to get a festival off the ground. It finally took root with three-day binational programs in 2024 and 2025. This year they\u2019re adding an extra day on the streets of Tijuana, to go along with Thursday\u2019s opening party at the East Village venue Quartyard, and Saturday\u2019s all-day, indoor-outdoor program at California Center for the Arts in Escondido.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>Daniel Atkinson, left, and Juli\u00e1n Plascencia at the 2025 San Diego Tijuana Jazz Festival. (Photo by Manuel Cruces Camberos)<\/p>\n

The Friday and Sunday events on Avenida Revoluci\u00f3n in Tijuana are both free. Thursday\u2019s opening bash requires an online RSVP<\/a>, with donations requested but not required. Saturday\u2019s agenda includes a couple of free outdoor programs, plus a ticketed show in the California Center\u2019s theater featuring four of the festival\u2019s top acts ($45-$90).<\/p>\n

We spoke with Atkinson by Zoom last week for our latest installment of our \u201cFive Questions\u201d series.<\/p>\n

How did the festival get started?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been active in producing jazz here in San Diego for the past 37 years. Right around the time I began the Athenaeum series in La Jolla, another organization was just winding down its activities. It was called San Diego Jazz Festival, and they produced the last international jazz festival in San Diego in 1984. The principals of that organization went on to found and produce San Diego Street Scene for many years.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward to 2020. During the pandemic, I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my future. I thought, this is the time to try to start something new that will have a binational scope built into its mission. We produced some concerts in 2021 and 2022, and then an initiative called World Design Capital San Diego Tijuana came up. It was a yearlong celebration of anything related to design in both of the cities, cross-border initiatives being the priority. My board and I decided to do the festival in 2024 as part of World Design Capital. That was the immediate impetus for doing this when we did it, although it was always in our mind that we wanted to do something that was binational.<\/p>\n

Can you tell me about some of the musical highlights in this year\u2019s lineup?<\/p>\n

Well, since I put it all together, I\u2019m excited about all of it! But I\u2019m very excited about bringing Mingus Dynasty<\/a> back to San Diego. I presented their premiere in 2018, and through the process of presenting them in Tijuana that year, I met my current partner in the festival, Juli\u00e1n Plascencia<\/a>, who played a big role in making that concert possible (Plascensia is general manager of the Tijuana restaurant Caesar\u2019s and is part of a prominent Baja restaurant family). We had Mingus\u2019s own legacy band, which was founded and organized by Mingus\u2019s widow, playing the music of \u201cTijuana Moods\u201d (a 1962 Charles Mingus album) in Tijuana for the first time. That was something incredibly magical. So we\u2019re bringing the magic back this year, and we\u2019re doing it right on the street on Avenida Revoluci\u00f3n, in a block that I\u2019m sure Mingus walked down in the \u201950s.<\/p>\n

Another highlight this year is the different performances by Danilo P\u00e9rez<\/a> with the SDSU Jazz Ensembles and the La Covacha Big Band from Ensenada. I learned from his agent that he likes to come to a place and work with ensembles that are native to that place. Given our binational location and region, I thought, let\u2019s do two different bands, and see what the approach to the music will be in two different settings \u2014 one in a formal concert hall (in Escondido), the other on the street in downtown Tijuana. Danilo is the director of the Global Jazz Institute at Boston\u2019s Berklee College of Music, which integrates other kinds of world music genres into jazz and vice versa. He\u2019s also the cultural ambassador of the Republic of Panama, which is his native country. So he\u2019s a jazz diplomat in a way that I think harkens back to Dizzy Gillespie.<\/p>\n

What can you tell me about Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band from New Orleans and the Binational Youth Ensemble?<\/p>\n

(The youth ensemble includes players from both San Diego\u2019s Young Lions Jazz Conservatory and the Instituto Contempor\u00e1neo de M\u00fasica de Baja California.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Brian Blade and the Fellowship Band. (Photo by John Abbott)<\/p>\n

The day after the last year\u2019s festival ended, I got an email from Brian Blade<\/a> saying, \u201cHey Dan, I\u2019d like to bring the band back to San Diego, and my availability is the first week of October of 2026.\u201d So this is a gift. I had him perform at the Athenaeum a few years ago, and of my 37 years programming jazz there, I would rank it among the top three concerts I ever presented. I think it\u2019s an absolutely outstanding band. It\u2019s been around for 29 years with almost the same personnel. And finally, the name of the band has our mission statement in it, which is fellowship.<\/p>\n

The Binational Youth Ensemble is an original creation of the festival. One of my essential collaborators on the Baja side is Ivan Trujillo, who is a trumpeter and band leader. One of his initiatives is this after-school program called Instituto Contempor\u00e1neo de M\u00fasica<\/a> (in Ensenada). And of course I have known (San Diego\u2019s) Gilbert Castellanos for decades, and used to be on the board of his Young Lions Jazz Conservatory<\/a>. So it seemed like a natural to have them play some music together. Logistically, it\u2019s a little complicated, but we\u2019re doing it. That\u2019s kind of the whole festival, I guess: It\u2019s logistically complicated, but we\u2019re doing it.<\/p>\n

Is it the hope that attendees will see events in their own country, or is it ideally an event where fans can cross the border and experience the festival on both sides?<\/p>\n

The answer is all of the above. People are going to go where it is convenient to them, where they feel comfortable, and in some cases, where they just legally can be. But we encourage everyone to go to everything, because even though the bands are the same on some of the days, the context is really different, so you get to see the bands from a different perspective. I\u2019m particularly excited about that with Brian Blade, for instance, because I think he\u2019s going to pivot in a totally different way to the (street) audience on Revoluci\u00f3n from what he does in the concert hall in Escondido.<\/p>\n

We have great cooperation from the Mexican consulate in San Diego, for making things smoother in terms of transit. You can either drive or park and walk, and the location is not far from the border. It\u2019s the block of Revoluci\u00f3n where Caesar\u2019s Restaurant is, so it\u2019s easy to just say to a driver, \u201cTake me to Caesar\u2019s.\u201d Both the Friday and Sunday events are free and open to the public. You can come and leave whenever you want. There\u2019s food and drink available all around, so people can make a real day out of it.<\/p>\n

You started in 2024 under the previous U.S. administration, and last year you were under the current one. Has there been a difference in how things have worked in presenting the festival since the change?<\/p>\n

For the most important thing, which is getting people to and from (the events), there hasn\u2019t been a big difference. In our first year, through one of our partners, we received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that was a big boost to our 2024 budget. We haven\u2019t had federal support for the festival since then \u2026 (Among private donors), Joan and Irwin Jacobs have been incredibly generous in making this entire thing possible.<\/p>\n

One of the things I\u2019m proud of this year is that we have support from both District One of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, which is Paloma Aguirre\u2019s district that runs from the border up into up to Market Street in downtown, and from District Five, Jim Desmond\u2019s district in Escondido. It\u2019s a wide political spectrum between the two of them, and both see the value of being involved in this event. I think the fact that people who live here in the border region understand that the U.S. and Mexico are inextricably intertwined and involved with one another. It\u2019s not something that\u2019s going to go away, and it\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n