A famed octet formed in California in 2004, the SFJAZZ Collective emerged in 2004 as a non-profit collective funded by the James Irvine Foundation related to the annual San Francisco Jazz Festival and designed to encourage and develop composition. Its co-founders were executive director Randall Klein and saxophonist/composer Joshua Redman, the group's original musical director, and soon attracted some of the most brilliant musicians on America's West Coast. They developed a pattern of reconvening in San Francisco each spring to select a different composer whose music they would then arrange in their own individual style to play in concerts and educational programmes in the Bay Area, alongside eight original compositions of their own, each written by a different band member. Among the great composers whose works they have adapted are Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson and Wayne Shorter. Each season of concerts has been followed by a limited issue live CD of that year's output. Redman left in 2007, but the band continued to uphold and adhere to the ideals and values established at the outset, being widely revered as a result.
