Fearlessly Building the Future: Meet SFJAZZ CEO Gabrielle Armand

Having spent most of her professional life immersed in music, particularly jazz, Gabrielle Armand appreciates the importance of timing. In fact, Armand notes that timing created the situation which brought her to SFJAZZ as its new Chief Executive Officer. “Me being ready to lead and be in a leadership role at an organization and the opportunity of SFJAZZ looking for somebody to take the organization into that next chapter of its development and organizational success — those two things converging, really made it a natural fit for me,” she told me.

Music has been a metaphor and guiding principle for much of her life. “It was instrumental in me forging my own identity as a black woman and as somebody coming up in New York in the ‘80s,” Armand said. Her father, who recently passed away, was from Haiti. Through him she knew Haitian history, but she didn’t have as deep a connection to African American history. “For me, jazz was that through line. It was the thing I gravitated towards in terms of feeling a sense of self and a sense of pride in African American history and culture.”

Coverage of SFJAZZ Gala 2025, including an interview with Gabrielle Armand

Armand leaves New York and comes to the Bay Area from Jazz at Lincoln Center where she was Chief Marketing Officer & Vice President of Brand, Sales, and Marketing, having steadily risen within the organization since joining it in 2009. She worked closely with Wynton Marsalis and became known as a corporate builder and innovative creator. “I always try to lead with my attitude, which is, 'let's do the best job we can with the highest quality,' particularly in service of a music like jazz,” Armand said.
Her duties included overseeing Audience Development, Corporate Partnerships and Sponsorships, Content Development, Marketing & Sales, Public Relations & Communications, and Creative Services. It seems like a full plate. Still, SFJAZZ Executive Artistic Director Terence Blanchard said, “She did a lot more than what her job description entailed when she was at Lincoln Center. She brings a wealth of expertise on how to run an organization.”

The early years of Armand’s career were spent working at GRP Records and then at Sony Music, where she was the Senior Director of Marketing for Jazz. She and Blanchard first met there in 1997. “He was one of the artists that I had the pleasure of serving and supporting when I worked at Sony in the ‘90s and he was on the label,” Armand said. “I have such admiration for him and for the work he does both in the classroom, on the bandstand, and now in this organization.”

Armand worked with hundreds of artists, sending thousands of releases into the marketplace, before moving into the nonprofit sector. As Marketing Director for Humanitarian Campaigns for the United Nations Association of America, she led fundraising, marketing, branding, and public relations for the UNA-USA’s HERO Campaign — an education information-based initiative dedicated to providing school-based support to children in HIV/AIDS affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. Among the elements of that program, Armand created a Young Ambassador Program arranging for American teens to take service trips to Africa. “Mentoring and managing staff has always been, in many ways, the most important job I've ever had.”

Blanchard hopes to leverage her international experience for greater SFJAZZ exposure around the world — a major objective of his. “One of the things that Gaby and I have been talking about is, 'how do we really get this across to a global community?'” says Blanchard. Audience building and brand awareness are two of Armand’s strengths which she will flex at SFJAZZ. The energy and clear-headedness she projects suggests a broad base of possibilities.

Armand believes SFJAZZ can and should be a leader in artist development across the arcs of their careers. “Let’s have a place, an incubation opportunity, a stage for creativity, for people to be able to come in and just test stuff out,” she says. “We’re already known for that, but I want us to develop that even more.”

Her listening habits are eclectic, but she enjoys going on an adventure. “I am most excited about hearing the people who I don't know. Local artists from this region who maybe are not as well known,” she says. “Yes, I will be excited to hear and see Branford and Dianne Reeves and all the folks who I know and love 100%, but I love the notion of emerging artists. I really fought hard to work with up-and-coming artists when I was at Lincoln Center.”

SFJAZZ feels robust under Blanchard’s fresh leadership but both he and Armand know they’ll need to be innovative to keep the organization healthy. “We've lived lives, we know that change is gonna happen,” Armand said. “I am going to steer into it but I'm not someone who is looking to come in and completely dismantle, because that's just not who I am.”

The “real development work” she did in sub-Saharan Africa showed the value of circumspection when it comes to change. “I've learned to be patient, I've learned to be thoughtful, but I also move.”

Though American performing arts organizations routinely operate on the thinnest of margins, their situations feel especially fraught in the current times. Post-pandemic attendance patterns have shifted away from subscriptions, corporations are giving less, and governmental support is unpredictable. Organizations are adapting on the fly. “If changes need to be made, we'll make them and we'll make them in as strategic and painless a way as possible, but they're going to be for a reason that is the right reason for SFJAZZ,” Armand said.

After a few weeks in her new position, she has been looking at what SFJAZZ can lean on and build with. The deep history and passionate support of jazz across the Bay Area are reasons SFJAZZ exists in the first place, she noted. “The strengths of this organization also are its incredible people,” Armand says. “They care, they're dedicated, they're hardworking. I am about people first, because people make the best organizations.” Armand and Blanchard are now entrusted with the stewardship of a unique and substantial organization. SFJAZZ has emerged from the many models which inspired it into a singular space. The evolution will continue.

“I feel like Gaby and myself have stepped into these positions at a point in our careers where we really have experienced enough to help us understand what's needed — to not only keep SFJAZZ successful, but to bring it into the future,” Blanchard said.

“I have so much respect for what Randall Kline built,” Armand said. “Terence talks about having the keys of a Maserati handed over to him. It's a beautiful car here that we are getting the opportunity to drive. My goal is really to build on that, use that as an amazing foundation from which to grow.”

She is focused on making the art front and center, making it about the music. “It's not about this player, that player. Is this person 'jazz,' is that person 'jazz,'” Armand said. “It's about why the music matters. It's about making sure that people understand that the art form is modern, that it's not a museum timepiece.”

Marcus Crowder is a Northern California based arts journalist. For 17 years he was the theater critic at the Sacramento Bee where he also wrote about jazz, pop, and dance. His work has appeared in Alta Journal, American Theatre, Comstock’s, Sactown, The San Francisco Chronicle, and 7x7.