At 30, the Jazz Gallery Remains a Force. Rio Sakairi Is Its Heart.

Rio Sakairi patted around inside her purse and retrieved a key that unlocks the elevator at 1158 Broadway. Exiting on the fifth floor, she glanced toward the black door leading to the performance space in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood, where the Jazz Gallery has made its home since 2012. The saxophonist Ben Wendel’s four-vibraphone band was about to perform on this January night: “This one you want to hear from the beginning,” she said.

The Jazz Gallery has long had a reputation as a live music venue where artists take risks and stretch their sound. This year, the nonprofit is celebrating its 30th anniversary; Sakairi has served as its artistic director since 2000. (She received the formal title in 2009.)

“It’s really just the music that’s driving my decisions,” she said, settling her coat on a sofa in the Gallery’s board room. Sakairi, 53, has been programming the venue for about as long as she’s been working there. “When people ask me what I play, I jokingly say, ‘I play musicians.’”

Sakairi is credited with nurturing an environment that has given major artists an early boost, including Gretchen Parlato, Linda May Han Oh, Gerald Clayton, Lizz Wright, Vijay Iyer, Ambrose Akinmusire, Joel Ross, Miguel Zenón, Kris Davis and Robert Glasper. “Absolutely my first real show as a leader” was at the Gallery, Glasper said via email, adding that the venue “was always open to me exploring what was in my mind and working it out live in front of an audience.”

For as long as these artists can remember, Sakairi has been a fierce, albeit frank advocate of artistic expression and development.