Curated by La Mancha Gallery · 12th Edition
The Arts Pavilion
31st Annual Central Avenue Jazz Festival
Saturday, September 19, 2026 · 11 AM – 7 PM
120-Foot Tent · Central Avenue at 41st Street · Los Angeles, CA · Admission Free
The Avenue Turns It Up
Twelve Years at the Heart of the Festival
For three decades and counting, one Saturday each year, Central Avenue remembers out loud. The Central Avenue Jazz Festival — Los Angeles’ longest-running free jazz festival — returns for its 31st edition on Saturday, September 19, 2026, filling the historic corridor with the sound that made it famous: the bebop, blues, and Latin jazz that once poured nightly from the Dunbar Hotel, the Downbeat, and the Club Alabam. From 11 AM to 7 PM, the Avenue belongs to the music, the vendors, the families, and the neighbors who never stopped calling this corridor home. Not even the pandemic — which silenced the festival for three years — could end the tradition; the Avenue simply waited, then turned the music back up. Admission, as always, is free.
And for the twelfth edition under its stewardship, dating back to 2014, La Mancha Gallery returns to curate the festival’s Arts Pavilion — the visual heartbeat of the day, housed in a 120-foot tent between Central Avenue and 41st Street, steps from the Dunbar itself.
The Arts Pavilion has grown into one of the festival’s essential destinations: a gallery without walls where the Avenue’s visual legacy stands shoulder to shoulder with its musical one. This year, La Mancha brings together approximately seventeen artists — painters, photographers, printmakers, and mixed-media artists — several of whom have exhibited in the Pavilion since its earliest years. Some are elders whose work documents the Avenue’s golden era firsthand; others are inheritors actively remaking its visual language today. Together they form a living portrait of a community that has always understood art and music as two verses of the same song.
Not an exhibition about the community, but an exhibition of it, by it, and for it.
Founded in 2006, La Mancha Gallery has spent two decades documenting, celebrating, and advancing the arts of Los Angeles — from Central Avenue jazz to AfroLatinx fine art. Curating the Arts Pavilion is among the gallery’s proudest annual traditions, and this year’s edition arrives with special significance for the corridor it calls home.
The artists taking the Avenue this year
KENNETH GATEWOOD
MOHAMMED MUBARAK
AEKILI ROSS - LSTPXL
OTHA DAVIS III - VAKSEEN
MARIO HERNANDEZ
@HerdzMedia
SKIRA MARTINEZ
ENKONE
@EnkOneArt
MIKE NORICE
BART ROSS
RIEA OWENS
BAKARI SANTOS
ARTURO SPARZA
WENDELL WIGGINS
LYRIC CROSS
BUENA JOHNSON
@BuenaVisionArt
JIMMY VELARDE
@Jimmy.Velarde.5
A Shared Vision · A Lasting Legacy
Honoring Councilmember Curren D. Price, Jr.
Councilmember Curren D. Price, Jr. · Ninth District, City of Los Angeles
The Arts Pavilion exists because of a shared conviction — one La Mancha Gallery has long held in common with Ninth District Councilmember Curren D. Price, Jr., whose office championed the Central Avenue Jazz Festival throughout his tenure and elevated it into the signature cultural event of the NEW 9th. The 2026 festival marks Councilmember Price’s final Central Avenue Jazz Festival as its central figure, and the Arts Pavilion honors his belief — a belief we share — that culture is not a decoration on community life but its foundation.
From the acquisition of the historic Lincoln Theater to Angels Walk Central Avenue, his stewardship helped ensure that the Avenue’s story is not merely remembered, but continued. The Arts Pavilion has been proud to be part of that continuation for twelve editions and counting.
Culture is not a decoration on community life — it is its foundation.
Plan Your Visit
When
Saturday, September 19, 2026
11 AM – 7 PM
Where
The Arts Pavilion — 120-foot tent
Central Avenue at 41st Street
Los Angeles, CA
Admission
Free and open to all
Family friendly
Artwork available for purchase
Questions · Artist Inquiries · Press
La Mancha Gallery · (626) 425-8300 · staff@lamanchagallery.com
STAY CONNECTED WITH THE ARTS PAVILION
For one Saturday each September, a 120-foot tent on Central Avenue becomes a gallery without walls. Seventeen artists, thirty-one years of festival history, and the community that keeps both alive.
Join the list and stay close to the Avenue. When you sign up you receive:
- Early notice about this year’s Arts Pavilion lineup
- Artist announcements as the roster is confirmed
- Invitations to La Mancha exhibitions and special events
- First look at Pavilion artwork before festival day
- Stories about the artists and the Avenue’s living legacy
The Festival
Central Avenue Jazz Festival
One of Southern California’s last genuine jazz celebrations, the Central Avenue Jazz Festival honors the legacy of the historic corridor that was once the heart and soul of Black Los Angeles — the avenue where jazz and rhythm and blues poured from its clubs and ballrooms from the early 1900s through the 1950s. Free and family friendly, the festival pays tribute to the giants who shaped this music — Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Charles Mingus, Gerald Wilson, Dexter Gordon — while spotlighting the emerging artists carrying the art form forward.
The festival unfolds along Central Avenue between Vernon Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, with live performances on multiple stages and at the Historic Dunbar Hotel, a rich offering of culinary experiences, and a family of pavilions — Youth, Health & Wellness, Public Resource, and the Arts Pavilion curated by La Mancha Gallery.
The ARTS PAVILION FEATURED ARTIST
Featured Artist · 2026 Arts Pavilion
Kenneth Gatewood
Kenneth Gatewood anchors the 2026 Arts Pavilion as this year's Featured Artist. His watercolors and mixed-media works pull vinyl records, 22-karat gold leaf, and salvaged printed matter into portraits of the musicians who built this music: Muddy Waters, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding. The materials do the remembering. A 7-inch single set into the surface of a painting is the record itself, not a picture of one.
His work sits naturally on this corridor. The Dunbar, painted from the hotel a few steps from the tent, is among the pieces on view. Visitors will find Gatewood inside the 120-foot Pavilion tent throughout the day, alongside sixteen exhibiting artists.
A concurrent solo exhibition, “The Medium of Memory,” is on view at Arts @ Delicious inside the Historic Dunbar Hotel through September 30.
The FACE OF THE Festival
[ARTWORK TITLE], 2026 · Riea Owens · Official artwork of the 31st Annual Central Avenue Jazz Festival
The Face of the Festival
Riea Owens
The artwork carrying the 31st Annual Central Avenue Jazz Festival belongs to Riea Owens, an exhibiting artist in this year's Arts Pavilion. Her illustration was selected as the festival's official graphic, which puts it on the posters, the program, the banners along the Avenue, and everything the festival sends out ahead of September 19.
The scene is a trio mid-set: a pianist bent over the keys, a tenor player standing behind him, a vocalist perched at the mic in orange and blue. It is the room the Avenue was known for, drawn rather than photographed, which lets it stand for every night at the Downbeat and the Club Alabam instead of one.
Worth saying plainly: the image representing the entire festival came out of the Pavilion. Anyone who recognizes it from a flyer can walk into the tent on September 19 and meet the artist who made it.
@RieasArt · Exhibiting Artist, 2026 Arts Pavilion
Featured Artists
Artwork for Sale
“Got My Mojo Working”, Muddy Waters
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original mixed media watercolor with 22 karat gold leaf and 7” vinyl record – 16” X 20” in Framed
$1,800
@KennethGatewood
“Superstition · Stevie Wonder”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original watercolor mixed media with 7” vinyl record – 14” X 14” in FRAMED
$1,500
@KennethGatewood
“Otis Redding”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original with 7” vinyl record Mixed media watercolor
12” X 22” Framed
$1,500
@KennethGatewood
“Purdy Gurl 2”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original watercolor
15” X 22” Framed
@KennethGatewood
“The Awakening”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Mixed media watercolor with 22 karat gold leaf. limited edition Giclee print
12″ X 22″ Framed
$950
@KennethGatewood
“Vision Unlimited”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Giclee limited edition print printers proof with Jet Magazine of Diahann Carroll
10″x12″ in Framed
$650
@KennethGatewood
“MLK”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original watercolor mixed media with 22 karat gold leaf
10” X 14” in Framed
$950
@KennethGatewood
“The Dunbar”
Artist: Kenneth Gatewood
Original Watercolor
@KennethGatewood
