The SF Offside Festival gives the local jazz scene a kick in the pants with three nights of genre- and expectation-bending performances. Thursday night’s show at Awaken Cafe in Oakland features the Wiener Kids Family Band, Mucho Stereo and Waystanders. Friday, the shindig moves to Duende in Oakland for local sax sizzler Howard Wiley and his trio and violin trailblazer Mads Tolling playing with his quartet. The series wraps up Saturday at the Community Music Center in San Francisco with Dave Mihaly & the Shimmering Leaves Ensemble, the Sheldon Brown Group and the Lisa Mezzacappa-Steve Adams Duo…

Cy Musiker: “Howard Wiley on saxophone… He’s a featured performer this coming week at the 2nd annual SF Offside Festival, which takes as its first principle that the Bay Area is a great place for modern jazz.”

David Wiegand: “That’s right, and that’s one of the reasons why we really love this festival, because it is a great place for modern jazz…”

Local jazz guitarist Alex Pinto and Laura Maguire, former music curator at cherished and daring SF venue Viracocha, are no strangers to pushing the limits of contemporary jazz. Their SF Offside Festival takes a local approach to the jazz circuit, celebrating homegrown heavy hitters — Mads Tolling, Howard Wiley and Marcus Shelby, and Dave Mihaly among them — and emerging talent such as Aram Shelton, Lisa Mezzacappa, and Pinto himself…

With its singular focus on emerging jazz talent in the San Francisco Bay Area, Offside positions the Bay Area region – and the jazz genre – as a living, fire-breathing being that is, if anything, even more exciting today than it was back during jazz’s heyday in the first half of the 20th century. In other words, this ain’t your grandpa’s jazz…

SF Offside is the creation of local jazz guitarist Alex Pinto and Laura Maguire, formerly curator of music activities at Viracocha…

San Francisco is on the cusp of becoming the epicenter for new innovations in jazz, and we have Alex Pinto and festival co-founder Laura Maguire to thank for giving the whole scene a much needed boost.

The San Francisco Bay Area has long been home to fantastic jazz musicians, but it’s also a notoriously balkanized community. The SF Offside Festival, a recent three-day gathering of top local talent, wove the area’s diverse talent into one intense weekend showcase, generating buzz for the local scene. The crowd was a mix of the area’s spread-out network of hardcore fans and the serendipitous arrival of curious passers-by…

The inaugural SF Offside Festival was a brilliant cross section of the Bay Area’s thriving jazz scene. Envisioned by co-founders Alex Pinto and Laura Maguire as the missing outlet for local jazz musicians—most festivals feature out-of-town acts and skip over the world-class musicians available in the area—the festival represented many overlooked colors of the jazz spectrum that thrive in the Bay…

The SF Offside Festival features the best innovators in the SF creative jazz music scene. Planned and executed locally, the festival shines a light on homegrown talent.

A brief but fascinating look into the current world of jazz, including an experimental night at El Valenciano with modern “garage jazz” quartet Bait & Switch, and brand new quintet These Are Our Hours, which features members of the Oakland Active Orchestra.