Friday, 10/31/2025, 1:30m - Midday Jazz with Chris Cortez: Interview with Alistair Monroe

Bradley Knipstein (Alistair Monroe photograph)

Alistair Monroe, founder of the North Beach Jazz Festival and the Oakland Cannery Collective drops by the KCSM Studio for a chat with Chris Cortez. Alistair founded the Oakland Cannery Collective to protect and preserve the Oakland artists’ live-work studios and his father’s legacy.

His father, Arthur Monroe (b. 1935 - d. 2019) was a rare abstract expressionist painter. He was also a writer, poet, musician, professor, and one of the few African-American chief registrars of a national museum at the Oakland Museum of California. Arthur Monroe, America's overlooked Jazz Abstract Expressionist is finally getting his due with a show at Van Doran Waxer Gallery, along with a recent museum show at Sonoma Valley Museum of Art.