Music Director, Fillmore Jazz Festival
Jason Olaine has been one of jazz’s most trusted programmers and advocates for three decades, with a career that spans clubs, record labels, radio, major festivals, and some of the most storied institutions in the music. He has served as Music Director of the Fillmore Jazz Festival since 2009, bringing his deep roots in the Bay Area scene — and his national network — to one of the West Coast’s longest-running free jazz celebrations.
Olaine grew up in Palo Alto, California, with jazz on the stereo at home and a trumpet in hand by age ten. He went on to produce and book a jazz festival for his hometown while still in college, a sign of things to come. After graduating from U.C. Santa Cruz, he landed internships at Yoshi’s Jazz Club, Jazz in the City (now SFJAZZ), KJAZ-FM, and The Gavin Report — a weekly radio trade magazine and major music convention producer — eventually earning full-time roles at both Gavin and Yoshi’s. All the while, he kept gigging with his college band, Jazz on the Line (later 2AM), playing clubs across the Bay Area.
He rose to become Artistic Director of Yoshi’s San Francisco before moving to New York to serve as Director of A&R at Verve Records, where he signed artists and produced records — earning a Grammy Award and multiple additional nominations. His subsequent roles have included VP of Programming at Festival Network, General Manager of Monterey Jazz Festival Records (where he directed the digitization of the festival’s historic archive), and Artistic Director of both the Newport Jazz Festival and the JVC Jazz Festivals. As an independent record producer, he has produced more than 60 albums.
Since 2012, Olaine has served as Vice President of Programming at Jazz at Lincoln Center, working alongside Wynton Marsalis to advance the organization’s global mission. He has described the role with characteristic directness: “I wake up and I love going to work.” He currently serves on the boards of the Cape May Jazz Festival Foundation, Music On The Inside, and the California Jazz Conservatory.
Throughout it all, he has returned each summer to the Fillmore, introducing artists he’s discovered in New York to Bay Area audiences, and bringing Bay Area musicians — Kim Nalley, Kenny Washington, Lavay Smith, Calvin Keys — to stages across the country. “It’s been a beneficial two-way street for both coasts,” he says. His mission has stayed the same since the beginning: bring jazz to as many people as possible, and trust that the music will do the rest.