It’s a good time to be a jazz lover in Sarasota.

That’s not only because the 46th annual Sarasota Jazz Festival takes place March 9-14, featuring top musicians including John Pizzarelli, Arturo Sandoval, Terell Stafford, Sammy Figueroa, Danny Sinoff, Allison Nash and more. It’s also because the venerable Jazz Club of Sarasota, which produces the festival, has been having a resurgence the past few years.

The club, founded in 1980 with just 10 members, has had highs and lows over the decades. Once a highlight of the arts season, with sellout concerts at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, it faced dwindling membership and attendance by the time the 2010s rolled around, down from a peak membership of 2,500 to around 425, and a “little bit of debt,” as club president Ed Linehan says. When Linehan (who has a background as principal of a performing arts school in Connecticut) signed on as president, he and the club’s board began to work to reverse that decline.

“We started by focusing on membership,” says Linehan. “Some former members didn’t realize that whether or not they were a member was important. We recovered former members, but we got new ones, too. And we increased membership dues.” 

But mostly, says Linehan, what he brought to his role was “a greater emphasis on communication, creating a newsletter sent out, initially twice a month, now weekly, telling stories about what’s happening and establishing a kind of relationship, while letting people learn about opportunities to attend events and support our youth programs. We upgraded our website and established our first presence on Facebook and Instagram.”

The changes weren’t all about marketing, though. The club also began to broaden the kind of music it produced.

“Historically, we had focused on what’s seen as straight-ahead jazz,” says Linehan, “music from the American Songbook, Big Band music, swing—really, the music of the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, with maybe a little Latin jazz or bossa nova. We started to broaden not only the kinds of jazz we offered but also the places we presented it. One of the most important new opportunities was Monday Night Jazz at FST in the Court Cabaret, which right now we’re selling out four to eight weeks ahead.” It doesn’t hurt, he adds, that the venue is “a true cabaret, with a full bar and limited dinner menu. It’s a small, intimate environment that’s very attractive when you’re listening to a small band.”

The club’s programming includes the festival’s mainstage events at the Sarasota Municipal Auditorium, along with concerts through the year at Holley Hall and a partnership with Sarasota Art Museum that delivers monthly Thursday Night Jazz concerts. In all, the club currently presents more than 100 performances a year. Now, Linehan says, “We’re in a happy position of having demand that we can’t satisfy.”

So, there are big plans to expand in the future. Having moved to a new office on Webber Street and hired its first-ever development director, Danielle La Senna (formerly with Choral Artists of Sarasota), the club is poised for the next steps.

While a five-year plan will bring the club to its 50th anniversary, leadership is looking beyond that as well. Among its “Vision for Tomorrow” bullet points: reaching back up to that 2,500-level membership by 2030; offering a 24/7 streaming radio station with both jazz music and jazz talk by later this year; initiating a vocal jazz competition named for the late singer Synia Carroll; returning to the Van Wezel for the 2030 festival, and—drumroll, please—opening the club’s own 300-seat venue and nightclub by 2035.

“Part of our desire to have a facility of our own is so we have the flexibility to do things when we want to, and also to be spontaneous,” explains Linehan. “My fantasy is that we would have a second space, too—smaller, with 75 to 100 seats, that we might operate as a jazz club featuring primarily local artists.” All these plans are based on moving from the organization’s volunteer status to hiring professional staff, and on expanding its pool of sponsors.

As Linehan and other club leaders work to reach those goals, in the meantime, jazz listeners can enjoy this month’s fest, which also includes a Monday Night Jazz Cabaret at FST, the traditional Jazz Trolley Pub Crawl, and an appearance by the Florida All State High School Jazz Band.

For tickets, visit sarasotajazzfestival.com; for more on the Jazz Club’s
plans and programs, visit jazzclubsarasota.org