Two Philly jazz institutions join forces as Chris’ Jazz Café hosts an all-star fund-raiser for the Clef Club

As the founder and director of the influential music program at the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz & Performing Arts, Lovett Hines sends each of his graduating classes off with the same directive. “I always tell the kids, ‘Wherever you go, I want you to look out for each other.’ That always comes into play when I see multiple generations of my kids playing together. I just can’t describe the feeling.”

Now it’s the students’ turn to look out for their beloved teacher, and for the institution that he’s helped to build. This Thursday, Chris’ Jazz Café will host a fund-raiser for the Clef Club that will bring together nearly two dozen current and former students and faculty members representing a who’s who of the jazz scene in Philly and beyond.

The lineup will feature jazz musicians based or who grew up in Philadelphia spanning several generations, including saxophonists Immanuel Wilkins and Bobby Zankel; pianists Orrin Evans, Joe Block, and Micah Graves; drummers Justin Faulkner and Nazir Ebo; trumpeter Arnetta Johnson and guitarist Monnette Sudler, among others.

The event, which will raise funds from in-person ticket sales as well as donations from Chris’ pay-what-you-wish livestream, is also a way for one local jazz institution to give back to another. According to club owner Mark DeNinno, “The Clef Club is an institution that turns out luminaries of the jazz scene. For us, it’s like salmon swimming upstream: Every year there’s a new group of musicians coming out of the Clef Club that take our stage as one more step in the progression of mastering their art.”

Money raised from the four-hour concert will go toward matching funds for a $600,000 Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program grant that the Clef Club received from the state. The funds will contribute to making much-needed improvements to the institution’s aging building at Broad and Fitzwater. “Updating the air-conditioning system and lighting, repairing the roof, redoing the bathrooms to make them more accessible for audiences, even redoing the sound system — those are the kinds of things that the money was earmarked for,” Hines explained. “It’s all about making the Clef Club what it should be.”

The partnership took root last summer, when DeNinno offered to donate the venue’s Yamaha grand piano to the Clef Club when Chris’ upgraded to a new instrument. Learning of the capital campaign, DeNinno hit upon the fund-raiser idea. “When you walk into the Clef Club, you see that this is a really grassroots-type of environment,” he said. “It’s not the polished Kimmel Center look. It’s got its scuffs and its scratches, but that really lends to its character. You get the sobering feeling that this is a true institution that cares about the music and the students, not so much about putting on a front.”

The Clef Club has been in its current home since 1995, though its history reaches back much further. It began life in 1935 as the social club for Local No. 274, Philadelphia’s African American musicians’ union. Hines brought his education program, which he’d founded a few years earlier at Settlement Music School, to the Clef Club in 1985.

Hines’ roster of students includes such major jazz stars as bassist Christian McBride and organist Joey DeFrancesco, who studied with him at Settlement. Justin Faulkner left the Clef Club at 17 to join Branford Marsalis’ band, while recent graduate Immanuel Wilkins is one of the music’s fastest-rising stars, set to release his second album for Blue Note later this month. Hines’ current class includes guitarist Leo Steinriede, winner of the 2020 Essentially Ellington composition and arranging contest from Jazz at Lincoln Center.

While many of those students have returned to perform at or otherwise support the Clef Club, Hines has long been reluctant to summon his former students for an event such as this. “I never want to play on my kids and ask them to do something for me,” he said. “I just want to praise them and support them. But when this happened and I reached out to them, they were so enthusiastic about doing it. It feels like a reunion; it’s almost like they were saying, ‘It’s about time.’”

That’s certainly true for saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, who started studying with Hines at Settlement when he was just 11 years old, following his teacher to the newly-established Clef Club program. (As it turns out, a brush with COVID-19 exposure likely means that Shaw will be unable to make the concert on Thursday.)

“For me it’s all about Mr. Hines,” Shaw said. “He’s not just a teacher, he’s a father figure. It means a lot to have that kind of support and encouragement, even years after I left Philly and developed my career. The thing about Mr. Hines is that he truly loves and cares about all of us, and to me that’s been golden. Sometimes you think that you only need that support when you’re coming up, but we all need support throughout our lives, and I feel like the teacher-student relationship is one that should never really end. With Mr. Hines, it hasn’t ended with any of his students.”

In fact, Hines insists that he still sees each of his students as the children they were when they first came under his tutelage. “I went to see Joey DeFrancesco at South recently, and he introduced me to the crowd and said, ‘I’m 50 years old and I still call him Mr. Hines.’ Well, in my mind’s eye I still see little boys. But when I see these grown men and see the level of their performing, it’s just amazing.”

7 p.m. Thursday, January 13, Chris’ Jazz Café, 1421 Sansom St., $25, 215-568-3131, chrisjazzcafe.com