SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival, which celebrates its third anniversary this week, is not the only jazz festival in the world to offer free admission to most of its events. Nor is it the only one to boast a talent-packed lineup of artists, including several multiple-Grammy Award winners, from nearly a dozen countries.

But this festival appears to be the first anywhere that straddles two adjoining countries and cities with music that brings together diverse performers and audiences alike. And its billing — “2 Countries. 4 Days. 1 World of Music.” — neatly summarizes this cross-border event’s purpose and allure.

“The idea of having it in both countries is such a great format for a festival. It’s a beautiful way to join both communities because music is the greatest tool we have for doing that,” said award-winning Mexican singer Lucia, 24, who performed at the event’s 2025 edition and returns this year.

Lucia’s enthusiastic evaluation is music to the ears of the festival’s co-founders, Daniel Atkinson and Julian Plascencia.

“While the border continues to divide, music continues to have the power to unite us. That is the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival in a nutshell,” said Atkinson, the founder of the nonprofit San Diego Jazz Ventures and the visionary program coordinator of La Jolla Athenaeum’s 36-year-old jazz concert series.

His sentiments are seconded by Plascencia, a veteran Baja restaurateur and the founder of the annual Tijuana Blues & Jazz Festival.

“The creativity flows in both directions,” Plascencia said, “with artists from Tijuana and Baja playing their first concerts in San Diego, and U.S. artists performing either for the first time or very rare dates in Tijuana.”

This year’s festival runs Oct. 1-4. It will feature two concerts in downtown Tijuana, one in downtown San Diego and one in Escondido. Admission is free to all of them except for the Oct. 3 concert at California Center for the Arts, Escondido, which is also the event’s only indoor concert.

Borders-blurring lineup

The lineup includes drum dynamo and five-time Grammy Award-winner Brian Blade and his genre-blurring group, The Fellowship Band, and Panamanian-bred piano master Danilo Pérez, a three-time Grammy-winner and founder and artistic director of the Berklee Global Jazz Institute at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Pérez will perform with the San Diego State University Jazz Ensemble and the Ensenada-based La Covacha Big Band. He will provide guidance and mentorship to student musicians in both ensembles.

The festival will present San Diego and Tijuana performances by the seven-piece Mingus Dynasty, which features tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery, pianist Helen Sung and Russian-born bassist Boris Kozlov. The band pays tribute to the music of modern jazz pioneer Charles Mingus and will perform some pieces from his classic 1957 album, “Tijuana Moods.”

“As we have grown the event, we have also continued to be dedicated to our mission,” Atkinson said. “Each band has something to say about our region, whether it is the artistic inspiration that Charles Mingus drew from Tijuana, the intersection of rap and jazz with Colectivo Fronterizo and Fémina Fatal, the African roots of son jarocho music and jazz with Lucía, and so forth. For me, it is all summed up in the name and the music of Brian Blade’s band, Fellowship.”

Plascencia, the owner of Tijuana’s famed Caesar’s restaurant, regards this year’s festival as a full-circle moment for him and Atkinson.

“Dan and I started our collaboration nearly nine years ago when we first brought Mingus Dynasty to Tijuana for an indoor concert,” Plascencia said. “To have this music, which was written about our city in the 1950s, performed for the public on Avenida Revolución will be an amazing experience for this ambitious binational event.”

A palpable taste of Mexico

For an extra charge, attendees at the Oct. 3 Escondido concert can also experience a taste of Mexico — literally — at a festival dinner hosted by Baja California-raised chef Juan González and his wife, farmer Megan Strom. They are the proprietors of the one-year-old Mesa Agricola, a small Escondido taqueria that this month was featured in the New York Times’ 2026 list of its “50 favorite restaurants in the United States.”

“Mesa Agricola is the definition of an under-the-radar sleeper,” Atkinson said. “It’s located in a downscale mini-mall, next door to a Little Caesar’s, with probably a 10-by-10-foot seating area. Juan and Megan deserve all the kudos they are getting.”

Kudos have also been coming to singer Lucia, who won top honors at the 2022 edition of the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. A Veracruz native, she performed here on both sides of the border at the 2025 San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival with her jazz band.

Her return this week will see Lucia leading a son jarocho group that features her father, Ramón Gutiérrez, a deft musical improviser and master of the four-stringed requinto. The group’s lineup also features several other musicians, including her brother Santiago, who sings, dances and plays the box-like Peruvian percussion instrument known as the cajon.

Veracruz is the center of son jarocho, the vibrant Mexican gulf coast music style that draws from Spanish, indigenous and African traditions. The best-known son jarocho song is “La Bamba,” thanks to the rocked-up 1958 version by Ritchie Valens. The 1987 remake by Los Lobos topped the U.S. charts in 1987.

“We will play ‘La Bamba’,” said Lucia, who was only 2 years old when she began singing in her parents’ son jarocho band. “I think it will be very exciting for people to get to experience the music I grew up with.”

While the differences between jazz and son jarocho are readily apparent, the two have a shared emphasis on improvisation.

“Definitely,” Lucia said. “And son jarocho is also a music that is all about community, the same as jazz. We have what is similar to a jazz jam session, which is called a fandango, where we play music and have food and celebrate. Son jarocho and jazz are both about interaction and reacting to what the other musicians are doing. And both have a very rich rhythmic element.”

Having made her very well-received area debut at the festival here in 2025, Lucia is eager to return this week.

“It was such a great experience and I had a wonderful time in San Diego and Tijuana last year,” she said. “Of course, the audiences were different, but in the best possible ways. A festival like this is such a beautiful way for people to connect.”

2026 San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival

When: Thursday, Oct.1, through Sunday, Oct. 4 (times vary daily)

Where: Thursday at Quartyard, 1301 Market Street, East Village, San Diego; next Friday onAvenida Revolución at Calle 4, Tijuana; next Saturday at California Center for theArts, Escondido, 340 North Escondido Blvd.; Sunday on Avenida Revolución at Calle 5,Tijuana.

Tickets: Admission on Thursday, Friday and Sunday is free, as are Saturday’s outdoor performances. Online pre-registration for Thursday’s concert is suggested. Ticket prices for all-day passes to Saturday’s indoor performances range from $54 to $90. Attendees can purchase an additional $125 Friends of the Festival option that includes a hosted dinner that night by Chef Juan González of Mesa Agricola, which earlier this month was named to the New York Times’ 2026 list of its “50 favorite restaurants in the United States.”

Phone: 760-839-4138

Online: sdtjjazz.org

Performance schedule

5 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, in East Village

Jungle Fire; Colectivo Fronterizo, featuring rapper Fémina Fatal; the Binational Youth Ensemble, featuring students from Ensenada trumpeter Iván Trujillo’s Instituto Contemporáneo de Música de Baja California and from San Diego trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos’ Young Lions Jazz Conservatory.

5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, in Tijuana

Colectivo Fronterizo, featuring rapper Fémina Fatal; Señales Selañes; Charlie Chávez y su Afrotruko.

2 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, in Escondido

Charlie Chávez y su Afrotruko (outdoors); Danilo Pérez with the SDSU Jazz Ensembles; Lucía and The Familia Gutiérrez (outdoors); Mingus Dynasty; Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band.

2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 4, in Tijuana

Binational Youth Ensemble, featuring students from Ensenada trumpeter Iván Trujillo’s Instituto Contemporáneo de Música de Baja California and from San Diego trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos’ Young Lions Jazz Conservatory; Lucía and The Familia Gutiérrez; Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band; Mingus Dynasty; Danilo Pérez and La Covacha Big Band from Ensenada.

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