For a case study in everything going right in Oakland, look no further than Duende, the jazz club and Basque-inspired restaurant at Telegraph and 19th in the historic Art Deco building that also houses Flora. Since opening in January, the venture has more than lived up to its promise, earning glowing reviews for its innovative menu while quickly establishing itself as a regional outpost for left-of-center jazz.

A profile of jazz pianist/composer Myra Melford, who appears this month in San Francisco to perform Language of Dreams, a multimedia commission from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Melford, a music professor at U.C. Berkeley, released her first solo piano album, Life Carries Me This Way, last month.

In 2010, Oakland’s Piedmont Piano Company, founded and still owned by the Callahan family since 1978, retooled itself as a prime venue for jazz and other live performances in a 1946 art deco building in the Uptown district. The Callahan clan has been influencing music and music education in the East Bay for decades, through piano lessons, sales, and tuning.