No shade on the Symphony, Santa Cruz Shakespeare, the Cabrillo Festival, the Warriors, the MAH or any of our other important cultural institutions, but for my money by far our standout local world-class arts organization and entertainment venue is Kuumbwa Jazz. Operating year-round and cooking on all burners, Kuumbwa (pronounced koo-UM-baa, Swahili for “act of spontaneous creativity”) turns 50 this spring and is the gold standard for grassroots initiative and sustained success.

Artists need skilled administrators to cultivate relations with the public. The management of an arts organization must have the complementary chops of nurturing an array of creative personalities and at the same time managing budgets and personnel and marketing and legal matters, to name just a few aspects of any business, and in a nonprofit compounded by the need for constant fundraising. Performance spaces require technical expertise and physical maintenance. Startup entrepreneurs learn as they go along.

Around this time in 1975 my friends Sheba Burney and Rich Wills (host of the excellent Pacific Jazz & Electrik Show on KUSP radio) and their co-conspirator Tim Jackson conceived the idea of Kuumbwa Jazz Society, a nonprofit educational organization devoted to producing concerts, offering classes and promoting music and musicians under the big tent of “jazz” for the entertainment and edification of the community. It sounded to me like a great idea, so I wrote them a check and offered my moral support, happy to be a charter member of such an ambitious enterprise.

At the time, they had no physical venue, and early shows were staged at places like the Duck Island Theater in San Lorenzo Park, the Quonset-hut Capitola Theater, the Laurel Street School (now London Nelson Center) auditorium and other small halls around town. Among the earliest stars they presented were Dexter Gordon, Elvin Jones and Joe Henderson, and they offered an audience to accomplished locals like Paul Contos, Stan Poplin and Randy Masters.

In 1977 they leased part of the old Parisian Bakery on Cedar Street and began to operate as a club. I donated the weathered silvery redwood siding off the broken-down chicken coop behind my old farmhouse in the Soquel Valley to be used as paneling on the front of Kuumbwa’s first stage. Audience seating was on recycled wooden church pews. It was a low-budget, downhome, somewhat austere but welcoming spiritual space. Monday nights, when Keystone Korner in San Francisco was dark, touring musicians would come down to play in Santa Cruz. That’s how I first heard such legends as Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner, Pharoah Sanders and other immortals.

As years went by, the room was remodeled to its current configuration with its famously clear sightlines and great acoustics in the 250-seat house with café and bar in back. Artistic Director Tim Jackson, who by 1991 was also artistic director of the Monterey Jazz Festival, knows practically everyone in the business and has steadily brought to town more and more stellar artists of diverse traditions and stylistic persuasions. This year, in March alone, contemporary masters Branford Marsalis, Joshua Redman and Christian McBride among many others are coming to play. Such are the musical pleasures and cultural history we continue to have the privilege of experiencing courtesy of Kuumbwa.

Bobbi Todaro, managing director then executive director who was instrumental in the years of historic growth from the 1990s through 2010s, retired year before last; new Managing Director Chanel Enriquez has since been running a tight, efficient and good-natured crew of paid staff and volunteers who create a warmly congenial atmosphere for audience and performers alike. Musicians frequently say from the stage that they love to play Kuumbwa because the intimate crowds are so appreciative. That has as much to do with the people behind the scenes as in the seats.

Kuumbwa team, my beret is off to you.

Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.