Join us to thank and wish a fond farewell to Scott Fulton, the originating project manager of the SJZ Break Room. Two sets will showcase Zheniia, Jazz Aid Fund artist Leela Paymai’s stunning Persian/jazz fusion project that stunned Summer Fest audiences in 2025, and local player Arnie Sainz, appearing with a selection of amazing artists including 2026 JAF artist Jason Lewis.

San Francisco-based bassist, trombonist, composer and arranger Leela Paymai grew up steeped in Persian pop music—Googoosh, Marjan, Dariush—before diving into modern jazz. What emerged is ZHENIIA: a genre-blurring project filtering ancestral memory through contemporary sound. The music collides identities and histories with microtonal scales, hip-hop rhythm and psychedelic textures. Bass-driven and politically pointed, songs weave oud melodies and Persian folk motifs through thick, improvisatory grooves. “I take inspiration from my grandparents and parents who, despite surviving the Iranian revolution, always found time to make music,” Paymai says. ZHENIIA debuted at the 2025 San Jose Jazz New Works Festival.

Pianist Arnie Sainz’s voice spans ensembles and genres from large-scale new music compositions to intimate improvised settings. After attending SJSU and immersing himself in the Bay Area music scene,  he moved to NYC, where he performs at notable venues including Dizzy’s Club, Bar Bayeux and Arthur’s Tavern. His debut trio album Darts was released by Adhyâropa Records in June 2023, featuring Marshal Herridge and Tony Moreno. Sainz has written for musical acts and award-winning films. His arrangement of Matthew Fullen’s “Elegant” was nominated for Best Instrumental Composition at the 2024 Taiwan Golden Melody Awards, and his score for Even In Darkness was featured at the 2025 Brooklyn Film Festival.

About Scott
Scott Fulton has been working at San Jose Jazz for over a decade, having a huge impact on the variety and quality of programming that SJZ has been able to undertake. A former bassist and graduate in Music Industry Studies at Cal State Northridge, Scott visioned and spearheaded the creation of the mobile SJZ Boombox Truck stage and booked and ran the program, bringing free music to thousands of people.

In 2019, he took the idea of the SJZ Break Room and ran with it, successfully writing a sizable grant from the Knight Foundation and overseeing every detail of the buildout of the space. When the Covid pandemic took hold, Scott quickly pivoted to make the Break Room a world class streaming and recording studio. Scott has managed it ever since, training and inspiring staff, overseeing sound and video capture and the mixing of live streams and final sound files. He has been the major curatorial voice of the space, booking Alfa Mist, Salami Rose Joe Louis, Blaque Dynamite, Lady Blackbird, Lalin St. Juste and Javier Santiago, among dozens of others, firmly positioning the SJZ Break Room as a place where both the most innovative and established artists could be seen in San Jose.

Scott will be honored by two sets by artists he has curated in the past, at multiple times during their musical journeys. First, Leela Paymai takes the stage with ZHENIIA, her Persian/jazz fusion project that stunned audiences at Summer Fest 2025; then, Bay Area-reared New York pianist Arnie Sainz will play with a number of well-known South Bay musicians including 2026 Jazz Aid Fund artist Jason Lewis.