Jon Dryden is a pianist, composer, professor of Jazz Studies at SJSU, and one of the 2025 Jazz Aid Fund grantees, performing at the San Jose Jazz New Works Fest on March 7 in the SJZ Break Room. We had the chance to pick his artistic brain on topics from what inspires him, how he balances the demands of teaching with composing while still earning enough to live, and his hopes and dreams for the Bay Area jazz scene.
Producer Jesse Harris describes Dryden’s playing as “somewhere between Vince Guaraldi and Paul Bley.” Others have called it “melancholy with a touch of hope,” says Jon Dryden. We think it’s dreamy, emotional, and layered–like crying while sitting under a grand piano when you’re a kid but still feeling comforted by it.
Dryden says for the Break Room show, “I’m bringing in a few amazing musicians whom I love to work with from New York and Los Angeles. The performance will open with a new piece called “Circada” and will include the SJZ grant-commissioned piece, “That Would Be Telling,”
The ensemble features Dryden on piano, Ben Flocks on tenor saxophone, Scott Colberg on bass, and Benjamin Ring on drums.
Dryden says the title, ”That Would Be Telling,” is “from a key phrase in the British Classic Spy-Fi series The Prisoner, a show I watched with my students. It’s one of the most amazing and influential TV shows ever made. The music in the show is excellent too.”
When describing his inspiration and process, he shares, “I love metaphors, especially when they are used in subtle ways that cross artistic and psychological disciplines. Concepts like these give me an unwritten emotional framework I can draw from musically.”
The television show presents an argument between the individual and the collective. “It asks, how much of each mode of thinking–collectivity and individuality– should exist in a society? Does a collective society lead to homogenization and surveillance states?”
Whether collective societies lead to homogenization remains to be seen. However, Dryden acknowledges that it’s nearly impossible to have a thriving jazz scene without one strong type of collective: community.
”I love what the SJZ Break Room is doing, which is establishing a place to play, listen and mingle, he says.”
However, he admits that it can be tough to maintain the sense of community he experienced in New York, where most venues are located in a smaller geographic area.
“The Bay Area Jazz scene has many amazing musicians, but is so spread out that there’s no center where people can congregate.”
Community means so much, says Dryden, because “we need each other, and we need to be around people who are better musicians than us. What I would like to see much more of is more friendly competition–people kindly challenging one another to grow musically and to share ideas.” Without friendly competition, he says, creativity can falter.
A robust community not only provides a center of gravity where jazz-lovers and performers can congregate, commune, and compete, but it creates a place to network and radically imagine new possibilities. New possibilities inspire not only new works of art but also new music students, new venues, and new job opportunities–something sorely needed to sustain Bay Area musicians.
“The hyphenated life is a common career for most musicians,” says Dryden, referring to the multiple streams of income that he depends on in order to afford the cost of living in Aptos, to which he returned in 2010 to care for his dad after living and working for 19 years in New York City.
The way Dryden describes the New York City Jazz scene conjures up complex feelings, much like his compositions do. His words bring up feelings and images, like the melancholy yet intensely alive takes he gives to popular songs he covers, like Nirvana’s All Apologies. He mentions venues, all close to one another, in a relatively condensed space. Images of happy, dreamy couples and groups of people weaving their way into and out of vibrant jazz clubs all close together–“that’s hard to beat, even when you have small hubs like those in San Francisco and the East Bay,” Dryden explains.
Prior to returning to his native California, Dryden was “solely making a living as a performing musician/composer/arranger/producer. Since I moved back home to Aptos, I’ve added instructor and lecturer to those skills.”
Some working musicians, says Dryden, have their hands in a lot of pots because “many of us love a lot of different kinds of music.” No exception, he cites musical influences as diverse as Shostakovich, Scriabin, and Smith–Elliot Smith, that is. He also loves Prince. Dryden himself has collaborated with an impressive group of musicians–Michael Urbaniak, Patrice Rushen, and the Brecker Brothers, to name a few. He has recorded with several stratospheric megastars–Questlove, Norah Jones, David Byrne, Dave Chappelle, and John Mayer. And if those accomplishments weren’t remarkable enough, he has also composed for both Michael Moore and David Byrne–both heroes’ heroes.
He finds inspiration both in the incredible musicians he loves playing with and in his students. “They know a lot of things I don’t, and they have new music they’re listening to that I’m not aware of. I like to hear what they are into musically. Some of my students write pieces that aren’t anything like what I would come up with. I love to see that. Semi-consciously, I pick up their concepts and sometimes I work bits–no stealing, mind you. Just bits–into my compositions.“
While he wishes he could devote more time to composing, “teaching earns me more than half my income and consumes less time.” And still, he admits that he could not afford living in Santa Cruz County without his family house, where he lives. So, the multi-hyphenate grindlife continues, and while he doesn’t know the answer to the economic woes that drives musicians out of urban areas they can no longer afford, he does hope that “scenes will start to percolate in unexpected places.”
Dryden started piano lessons at five and began composing not long after. ”The compositions weren’t very good then, of course; but I have always associated performing and composing as one thing,” he says.
While he has strong ideas about composition and excellence, his view on interpreting music is more open-ended: “I like music to be whatever the listener wants it to be. One role a composer/songwriter can take on is making the personal universal.”
Check out the Jon Dryden Quartet at SJZ Break Room for New Works Fest, Friday, March 7 at 8p (Doors open at 7:30p). Tickets. Livestream.
Instagram: @jondryden68
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As a jazz bassist, composer, and arranger, Ken Okada has spent his life finding the groove. Unlike in other genres of music, in jazz, bass is the glue responsible for holding the group together. When composing music, Ken is less concerned with being credited with a beautiful melody and more so leaving room for other musicians to join and create.
Born in New York to Japanese parents, Ken also spent time in Brazil and New York in his youth as his family followed his father in business. His ear for music came from his creatively inclined older sisters, who played piano and influenced his taste in music. Video game soundtracks also inspired Ken. He began learning to produce music electronically and playing in multiple bands throughout middle and high school.
After attempting law school at university, Ken began sitting in with the historic Keio University Big Band, where a friend went. That was a huge turning point for Ken, who would soon dedicate his life to music while beginning a tech career, starting his businesses to support his family, and moving to the United States.
Over the years, Ken has composed music as part of the Ken Okada Group and performed in jazz combos and big bands featuring artists such as John Worley, Leon Joyce, Yankee Taylor, Destiny Muhammad, Eric Colvin, and Rick Vandivier and numerous jazz clubs and festivals around the world.
Most recently, Ken has recorded and performed with a percussion phenom, Yoyoka Soma, a 13-year-old Japanese musician living in America who went viral in 2018 for renditions of Led Zeppelin. Together, the group has released the album “Square One,” now available on Spotify and Apple Music.
In our conversation, we discuss Ken’s approach to jazz, his upbringing as a Japanese musician, the influences of jazz in San Jose, and his most recent project featuring Yoyoka.
Join Ken this Friday, 11/10, at 8 pm at the San Jose Jazz Break Room as the Ken Okada Group Featuring YOYOKA engages audiences with stunning rhythm, high-flying melodies, and original arrangements by Ken Okada.
Follow Ken at @jazzr777
Listen to the Ken Okada Group on Spotify: