Jazz is in the midst of an unprecedented change that can best be described as a vibes revolution.

After generations of remarkable stability, the standard instrumentation of music is expanding, fueled by a rising tide of brilliant young vibraphonists who offer a very different range of sounds and harmonics than the piano (the main instrument of the rhythm section, often displaced by the vibraphonists). These vibraphonists are not sitting around waiting for the phone to ring. They are taking the initiative as bandleaders and composers, making their instrument more visible than ever before.

A series of Bay Area performances over the coming weeks will offer a comprehensive look at the rising state of the mood, starting with Jalen Baker at Tenderloin nightspot Black Cat. The Houston native makes his Bay Area debut as a bandleader Aug. 29-Sept. 1 with a crew of graduates from Houston’s vaunted High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, including drummer Gavin Moolchan and pianist Paul Cornish (both of whom play on Baker’s impressive albums). This is me, this is usfrom 2021, and Be quiet(from 2023). The group is accompanied by special guest Alexandria DeWalt on flute and vocals.

At 29, Baker has already performed as a sideman with drummer Johnathan Blake (including on SFJAZZ in February), bassist Amina Scott and trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, one of the veteran bandleaders who has conspicuously added a vibraphone chair to his group in recent years. Baker has taken advantage of the steady opportunities, “but when I got to college, my attitude was that nobody hires vibraphonists, so you have to be a composer and a bandleader,” he said.

He’s been around long enough to help change that imperative of self-sufficiency while paving the way for vibraphonists who come after him. “I see a lot of really young players who are great and maybe still in college,” Baker said, noting that he also feels embraced by the generation before him.

“It’s a supportive community,” he said. “When I played with Johnathan Blake at the Village Vanguard a few months ago, Joel Ross texted me to say he was coming, and he and (fellow vibraphonists) Simon Moullier and Juan Diego Villalobos came out completely. It’s an exciting time for the instrument.”

Although he is the same age as Baker, Ross is already an established star and the face of the new vibes popularity with four acclaimed albums on Blue Note Records. He brings his Good Vibes band to the The Blue Note Jazz Festival takes place in Napa. on 30 August and the The Monterey Jazz Festival on September 28th.

Another sign of the instrument’s increasing popularity is the international palette of New York talents who are attracted to the vibes. Venezuelan-born Villalobos, a 29-year-old who also plays piano, is a regular sideman and leader with Black Cat. And the 30-year-old French-born Moullier is part of a block of programming focused on vibes next month on SFJAZZ, Implementation 22 September with a quartet that includes some of New York’s most sought-after accompanists. (Moullier made a memorable SFJAZZ debut last year as soloist in Terri Lyne Carrington’s multimedia production Seen/Unseen).

SFJAZZ’s Good Vibes series at the Joe Henderson Lab (JHL) begins on September 19th with the Kyle Athayde, 36, of Orinda, is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist whose skills make some fellow musicians not even realize he is an accomplished vibraphonist. But there is no ambiguity about the musical identity of San Francisco-raised Sasha Berliner, 26, who plays four JHL shows on Sept. 20 and 21. She has developed an elegant sound that combines mostly acoustic instruments with subtle post-processing to enhance her band’s sonic depth and textural feel.

Although she now lives in Los Angeles, Berliner spends a lot of time touring and shares Baker’s observations about the “huge increase in people playing vibes. I think I’ve noticed it most clearly in colleges and summer music camps,” she said. “But if you look at the jazz scene, there are a lot of new bands that are putting vibes at the forefront. I’m not sure why it’s so prominent now.”

In many ways, Berliner is the answer to her own question. A flexible improviser who enriches many musical environments, she has worked with well-known artists such as Beck, Nicholas Payton, Christian McBride, Tyshawn Sorey and Cécile McLorin Salvant, while also releasing several acclaimed albums as a leader. Berliner points out that the vibraphone, as a percussion instrument that fights its way through the mix with its melodies, creates more space than a piano and “functions much more like a guitar,” she said.

“The number of notes you can play is limited, and it works for a lot of different genres, pop, R&B, classical. All of that is really appealing. But the most important thing is having a really strong voice. Simon and Jalen and (vibraphonist) Chien Chien Lu, we all know each other, and no one sounds the same. It’s refreshing to have the vibes at the forefront of a band’s sound, and I feel like that was something that was pretty rare early in my career.”

The vibraphone has been an essential creative instrument in the Bay Area for more than half a century. Even before Bobby Hutcherson (1941-2016) settled in the coastal town of Montara, San Mateo, in the early 1970s, he was a regular on the San Francisco scene. As an improviser and composer, he was (along with Gary Burton) the most important jazz vibraphonist of the 1960s and, as a bandleader and indispensable sideman on dozens of classic albums, created an extensive body of work for Blue Note. While vibes can be a matter of taste, the instrument’s metallic tones shimmered and purred in Hutcherson’s hands.

Randall Kline founded the organization that became SFJAZZ with Hutcherson and fellow Bay Area Blue Note giants Joe Henderson and Tony Williams. Hutcherson became a founding member of the SFJAZZ Collective in 2004 and immediately brought prestige to the ensemble. When he left the group in 2007, Stefon Harris took over as Vibes chairman, a passing of the torch that seems particularly fitting in hindsight.

Although he has been far less visible as a musician in recent years due to his off-stage work as an app developer, TED Talk-giving conceptualist and professor at Rutgers University–Newark, Harris, 51, is the 21st-century role model for creatively ambitious vibraphonists. Berkeley trumpeter and composer Ambrose Akinmusire, artistic director of the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz at UCLA, believes Harris’ influence is underestimated. “He doesn’t get the credit,” Akinmusire said. “Stefon, (pianist) Jason Moran and (drummer) Eric Harland influenced a whole generation. A lot of these young players have clearly studied Stefon.”

As for the vibes revolution, Akinmusire isn’t sure he’d call it a sudden development, at least not given the number of talented musicians. He names a whole host of people in their 40s, including LA’s Nick Mancini and Kansas City’s Peter Schlamb, as well as San Jose’s Chris Dingman and the Wee Trio’s James Westfall, both of whom, like Akinmusire, are graduates of the elite Hancock Institute (then called the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz).

“I don’t know if this is happening suddenly,” Akinmusire said. “It’s about opportunities. Generally, these guys were happy to be sidemen. Today, younger musicians are forced to be band leaders. You see that with every instrument.”

If there’s one player from Akinmusire’s cohort who has made the leap from accompanist to leader, it’s Warren Wolf, 44, who took over the SFJAZZ Collective’s Vibes chairmanship from Harris in 2013. A decade later, Wolf is currently the second-longest-tenured member of the group, which plays the opening set Sept. 27 on the Monterey Jazz Festival’s main stage, Oct. 12 at Irvine’s Barclay Theater and Oct. 24-27 at SFJAZZ Center.

A multi-instrumentalist who played a range of keyboards and percussion on his 2023 album Chano Pozo: OriginsWolf has returned to the vibes with all his might with his new album, History of the vibraphoneHis quintet is devoted to compositions by many of the instrument’s giants, from Lionel Hampton, Terry Gibbs (who celebrates his 100th birthday on October 13) and San Mateo-raised Cal Tjader to Roy Ayers, Dave Samuels and Joe Locke. Milt Jackson, the genius who brought the vibes into the modern jazz age, is represented with “Django,” a standard by Jackson’s bandmate John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

The origin story of the instrument in jazz, which was invented in the 1920s and originally produced by competing companies as a vibraphone and vibraharp, is delightfully dramatic. In the summer of 1930, Louis Armstrong moved to Los Angeles and took over the Les Hite Band, which was renamed the Sebastian New Cotton Club Orchestra (after the Culver City nightclub where the group was based).

On October 16, 1930, Armstrong took the orchestra to NBC to record a new song by Eubie Blake and Andy Razaf, “Memories of You.” When a Vibes set was discovered in the studio, drummer Lionel Hampton was persuaded to try it out, and his unaccompanied introduction, solo and accompaniment transformed what had been rarely heard until then into a viable lead instrument. Along with Red Norvo (who began on October 1, 1930) xylophone and marimba), Hampton made the vibes a permanent part of the swing era with his exuberant solos, but it was Jackson’s unique, blues-infused brilliance that ensured that the mood did not go the way of the clarinet with the advent of bebop.

In nearly every subsequent jazz style, from hard bop to free jazz to fusion, there have been a handful of significant vibraphonists, and there are many in today’s scene that I haven’t mentioned here (including Steve Nelson, one of my favorite musicians on any instrument).

What is particularly striking about the current generation is its diverse origins and the high proportion of women. Leading vibraphonists of the decade include Mexican-born Patricia Brennan, New Yorker Nikara Warren, Chilean-born Diego Urbano and Taiwan’s Yuhan So And Chien Chien Lu, who became known in the band of trumpeter Jeremy Pelt. Together with bassist Richie Goods, Lu leads the group Connected, which Yoshi’s in Oakland on September 27th and the Monterey Jazz Festival on September 28th.

These musicians are changing the map by finding work as bandleaders and making room for the vibes in nearly every corner of the contemporary scene. But the fact is that the instrument is not in as high demand as bass, drums or piano. It is bulky and difficult to transport, and many venues do not stock a house set.

“It’s a specialty instrument,” Berliner said. “You might need vibes for one project, but not for everyone. It’s a very special sound. So getting into the instrument means a lot more legwork, promoting yourself and creating opportunities. You have to stay relevant and give people a reason to want vibes, to want you as an improviser.”

Vibraphonists are raising the bar and breaking it, changing the sound of jazz.