Rio Sakairi

Curator, Thursday Night Jazz

Rio has single handedly influenced the current jazz scene more than anyone I know,” proclaims pianist Vijay Iyer. As the Artistic Director at The Jazz Gallery since 2000, she has established herself as a leading expert in the field. Under her leadership, The Jazz Gallery has come to be known as "the most imaginatively booked jazz club in NYC" (NY Times), while becoming a three-time recipient of the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. Rio also received the 2016 Jazz Hero Award.

Rio has produced sold-out events at venues such as Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Space, HarlemStage, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning etc. Rio has appeared as a guest speaker or panelist at APAP, JazzNow, and CMA Conference. She also conducted masterclasses at universities and jazz youth camps. She has served on panels for the NEA, the Doris Duke Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, American Pianists Association, CMA, Pew Foundation, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, German Jazz Prize, and others. She has been a consultant to the Symphony Space, North Sea Jazz Festival, the Newport Jazz Festival, So What’s Next Festival, Cologne Jazzweek, and ACT4Music Festivals. Rio also serves the NoMad Jazz Festival as its artistic director. Her blog has 3,000+ monthly subscribers.

Veteran critic Ted Panken has observed, “Jazz would not sound the way it does today had not The Jazz Gallery served as a locus for NYC’s polyglot musical community to exchange ideas and work on moving to the next step” and Nate Chinen (NPR) called Rio “one of the most influential arts programmers of our time.