SAN DIEGO — Centennial celebrations, new breakthrough artists and notable anniversaries abounded in jazz in 2025. It was a year that saw America’s richest homegrown musical art form celebrated near — including at the second annual San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival and an array of concert halls and clubs here — and very far.

How far? On April 30, concerts were held in San Diego and more than 190 countries to mark the 14th annual edition of the United Nations-sponsored International Jazz Day. It culminated with an all-star concert in Abu Dhabi that featured artists from 14 countries.

Many of those artists have performed multiple times in San Diego. They include: singers Dee Dee Bridgewater, Etienne Charles, Kurt Elling, Ruthie Foster, José James and Dianne Reeves; guitarists John McLaughlin and John Pizzarelli; bassist Linda May Han Oh; pianists Herbie Hancock and Danilo Pérez; saxophonist David Sánchez; and trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, a 2024 Kennedy Center Honors recipient.

Hancock has headed International Jazz Day since its inception. He will do so again when the 2026 edition is held in his hometown of Chicago. The 85-year-old keyboard giant — who also heads UCLA’s Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz Performance — toured across Europe and the U.S. this year. He starts his next concert trek on April 14 in Los Angeles.

A number of legends were posthumously celebrated this year to mark their 100th birthdays, most notably Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Celia Cruz, Roy Haynes, Art Pepper and former San Diego sax and flute great James Moody, who was saluted anew on record and in all-star concerts in New York and Escondido. (Davis and Moody first performed together in 1949 at the first Paris Festival International de Jazz and reunited on Quincy Jones’ 1989 album, “Back On The Block.”)

“Moody @ 100” was presented on the second of three days of the 2025 San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival, which presented top international, national and regional artists at one indoor and two outdoor concert sin both of its namesake cities.

Moody, who died here in 2010 at the age of 85, was saluted on stage at California Center for the Arts, Escondido by a talent-packed band. It featured two Grammy Award-winners — bassist John Clayton and saxophonist David Sanchez — along with invaluable San Diego jazz mainstays Gilbert Castellanos on trumpet and Holly Hofmann on flute.

The festival, which is funded with nearly $400,000 in seed money from Qualcomm co-founder Irwin M. Jacobs, is the brainchild of San Diego’s Daniel Atkinson and Tijuana’s Julian Plascencia.

Atkinson, whose impact on this region’s cultural scene has been profound, this year celebrated his 36th year curating jazz programing at the La Jolla Athenaeum Music & Arts Library and his 26th year guiding the Athenaeum Jazz at Scripps Institute concert series. Anticipation is already building for the 2026 edition of the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival.

Trumpeter Castellanos, who has performed at both editions of the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival, celebrated a major anniversary of his own in 2025.

This year marked his 10th as the curator of San Diego Symphony’s Jazz at The Jacobs series, which saw him draw a sold-out audience to his Nov. 29 John Coltrane tribute, “Blue Train.” Castellanos’ Aug. 3 Miles Davis “Porgy & Bess” tribute drew a capacity crowd to The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, the symphony’s outdoor concert venue. This year also was the eighth anniversary of Castellanos’ Young Lions Jazz Conservatory, which has nurtured a host of fresh-faced musical talents here.

Much credit is also due to La Jolla Music Society which, following in the footstep of La Jolla Athenaeum, continues to bring in major jazz artists from around the world for concerts at its state-of-the-art Baker-Baum Concert Hall, its adjacent cabaret venue The JAI and at the Balboa Theater in downtown San Diego.

In Del Mar, the three-day San Diego Jazz Party celebrated its 36th anniversary; its 2026 edition will take place Feb. 20-22. The all-ages Dizzy’s in Bay Park turned 24 this year, while award-winning singer Leonard Patton’s Jazz Lounge celebrated its fourth anniversary. (Look for Patton to take on a national and international musical profile later this year.) And top flutist Hofmann celebrated the third anniversary of her free weekly Sunday afternoon jazz concerts and jam sessions at Tio Leo’s in Bay Park.

Tio Leo’s, The Jazz Lounge and Dizzy’s each showcase leading local, regional and national performers. The fact that San Diego has weekly jam sessions nearly every night of the week at various venues further speaks to the vitality of the jazz scene here.

This year also saw sax legend Charles McPherson — a San Diego resident since the late 1970s — celebrate his 86th birthday with performances across the nation, including a pair of summer concerts at Lou Lou’s in North Park. McPherson will be featured at the Castellanos-led Jazz at the Jacobs concert on Feb. 14, which is aptly titled “Songs for Lovers.”

Another saxophonist, San Diego native Brian Levy, performed Nov. 29 with Castellanos at the sold-out Jazz at The Jacobs “Blue Train” concert. Since becoming the head of SDSU’s Department of Jazz Studies in 2023, Levy has helped drive a sharp increase in enrollment and hosted concerts by national luminaries, including McPherson.

As in previous years, nearly every jazz event here of note was enthusiastically promoted by KSDS 88.3 FM, the award-winning radio station that has been airing for more than 50 years from its studios at San Diego City College.

The station suffered a major blow in July when federal cuts to public broadcasting grants eliminated about $220,000 from KSDS’s expected funding, a loss of approximately 20 percent of its annual budget. In an impressive demonstration of how valued KSDS is by its listeners, a three-day emergency fundraising drive in August saw the station’s listeners pledge over $100,000 to help plug that hole.

KSDS continues to broadcast jazz, 24 hours a day, on the airwaves and online, thanks to key support from from the San Diego Community College District. Along with KPBS, it is one of only two public radio stations in San Diego. Its importance as a vital jazz outlet cannot be underestimated.

As the year drew near its conclusion, veteran drummer and vibraphonist Chuck Redd cancelled the annual Christmas Eve jazz concert he has hosted at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts since 2006. He did so to protest its recent renaming as the Trump Kennedy Center.

Redd’s move came less than six months after celebrated pianist and composer Jason Moran left his position as the Kennedy Center’s artistic director for jazz after 14 years. Moran did not cite a reason for his resignation from the center, writing in a social media post: “Thank you to the composers, comedians, choreographers, performance artists, skateboarders, filmmakers, authors, illustrators, dancers, photographers, sculptors, scientists, crews and on and on. These young ones are beautifying the stage. And with that, I bowed on Juneteenth.”

On Sept. 11, the center fired Kevin Struthers, who had been its director of jazz programming for the past 30 years. It remains to be seen if the 2026 NEA Jazz Masters Tribute Concert — which will honor keyboardist Patrice Rushen, percussionist Airto Moreira, singer Carmen Lundy and broadcaster Rhonda Hamilton — will take place at the center on April 18 as currently scheduled.

On a more resounding note, 2025 saw not one but two two films released about Keith Jarrett’s epic 1975 solo piano concert in Cologne, Germany.

One of them, “Köln ’75,” recently screened at San Diego’s DIgital Gym is a feature film while the other. The other, “Lost in Köln,” is a documentary about that fabled Jarrett performance, which was released as “Köln ’75” by ECM Records in March, 1975, and remains the best-selling solo piano album of all time in any genre.

Both are worth contenders should the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival add a film component in 2026, a year that will see the debut of the Santa Monica International Jazz Festival. To be held May 1-9, it is the brainchild of bass great Stanley Clarke and will feature Oscar-winner Debbie Allen as its dance curator. No performers have been announced yet for the festival, which will be held on multiple stages.

©2025 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.