Overview San Jose Jazz Summer Fest is a three-day music festival that takes over downtown San Jose every August. It started as a free two-day show in Plaza de César Chávez and is still run by San Jose Jazz, the non-profit that also books a year-round club, the SJZ Break Room. The program reaches well past straight-ahead jazz into blues, salsa, Latin jazz, funk, R&B, New Orleans brass and zydeco. DownBeat called it "one of the world's great urban jazz festivals." On site The Main Stage sits in Plaza de César Chávez, and the Blues/Big Easy and Latin Tropical stages share the same fenced park. Indoor stages fill the surrounding blocks: the Montgomery Theater, the Club Regent room at the Signia by Hilton, the SJZ Break Room, and a free youth stage inside the San José Museum of Art. Much of it is free. Salsa bands turn the street in front of the Latin Tropical Stage into a dance floor. VIP guests sit in front of the Main Stage and eat and drink in their own pavilion. Buskers play the side streets on Saturday and Sunday, and a late-night Club Crawl moves the music into downtown bars once the headliners finish. Audience About half the crowd lives in Silicon Valley, and most of the rest comes in from around the Bay Area. In the festival's own attendee surveys, 57% of fans are women, 71% hold a bachelor's degree or higher, and 63% live in Santa Clara or Alameda County. The crowd is 38% Black, 32% White and 15% Latino, and the largest income band is $100,000 to $150,000 a year. Talent and Influencers Past performers include Herbie Hancock, Angélique Kidjo, Common, En Vogue, Chris Botti and Maze featuring Frankie Beverly. Recent Main Stage headliners have included Patti LaBelle, Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue, Cory Wong and Zapp. The festival booked Kamasi Washington and Trombone Shorty before either one broke nationally. Washington had no agent. High school all-star bands and the Summer Jazz Camp ensemble share the weekend with the touring acts. Track record The New York Times picked Summer Fest as one of the top 50 cultural summer festivals in the country and called it "the greatest jazz mélange in Silicon Valley." San Jose Jazz bills it as the West Coast's largest Latin jazz festival. Around its flagship weekend the organization runs jazz camps and a youth all-star program, and it gives grants to Bay Area musicians to write new work. Brand presence Every stage is named. Jay Paul Company holds the Main Stage, PG&E the Latin Tropical Stage, Applied Materials the Community Swing Stage and ASML the youth stage, and McDonald's most recently held the Blues/Big Easy title. San Jose Marriott is the official hotel partner. Stage title sponsors get banners at their stage, a daily :30 spot on the Main Stage screen and a 10x10 booth. Tech firms, credit unions, breweries and the Mercury News fill out the sponsor wall.