Thirty years after its first note sounded inside a converted science lecture hall, Athenaeum Jazz is kicking off a milestone anniversary season at the Scripps Research Auditorium in La Jolla. The series opens Nov. 3 with the Joshua Redman Quartet, marking the saxophonist's debut appearance for the Athenaeum and his first time bringing his own quartet to San Diego in 15 years.
According to ljathenaeum.org, the season-opening concert starts at 7:30 p.m. and features Redman alongside pianist Paul Cornish, bassist Philip Norris and drummer Nazir Ebo. The 30th anniversary season was announced on the Athenaeum's own events page as a special return to the Scripps venue, per the organization's listings. The Scripps Research Auditorium has hosted more than 130 jazz luminaries over the decades, as reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune.
The season continues Nov. 15 with saxophonist David Sánchez and his group Tambó, also at Scripps Research, per the Athenaeum's schedule. It wraps up Dec. 3 back at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library with the Athenaeum debut of vocalist Gabrielle Cavassa, who signed with Blue Note Records in August 2024 and toured internationally after the 2023 release.
A Series Born From a 1989 Spark
The Scripps iteration of the series traces back to a jazz program Daniel Atkinson founded at the Athenaeum itself in 1989, before he and the La Jolla Athenaeum Music & Arts Library launched the Scripps series in 1996, the Union-Tribune reports. That inaugural 1996 season featured organ legend Jimmy Smith, saxophonist and flutist James Moody, and the band TanaReid, the same Union-Tribune account notes.
The series has not run uninterrupted. The 2020 spring and fall concerts at Scripps Research Auditorium were both canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, per the Union-Tribune's reporting. Even so, the program has endured and thrived for three decades under Atkinson's guidance, according to the Athenaeum's own jazz page.
From Free Science Hall to Paid Rental Venue
The auditorium's history runs deeper than its jazz programming. The Neurosciences Institute offered its auditorium to many nonprofit performing-arts groups in San Diego, and the venue was made available at no charge for roughly 16 years to many of those groups, according to the Neurosciences Institute. The Neurosciences Institute moved to new quarters in 2012, and its three buildings became part of TSRI.
Use of the auditorium is now controlled by its owner, Scripps Research.
The Union-Tribune reports a seating capacity of 352, while Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, the firm behind the building's design, describes it as a 352-seat auditorium. The Scripps venue gives the Athenaeum Jazz series room to work with.
Engineered for Sound, Built for Science
The auditorium was never meant to be a concert hall first. Architects engineered the interior to maximize the dispersion of unamplified sound, designing it to accommodate scientific lectures and unamplified chamber music, according to Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.
The auditorium was once made available to nonprofit groups at no charge. The Athenaeum continues to present what its own materials describe as a mix of jazz legends and rising young stars inside a room originally built for science, not swing.
