As the founder and director of the influential music program of the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz & Performing Arts, Lovett Hines sends out each of his promotions with the same directive. “I always say to children, ‘Wherever you go, I want you to take care of each other.’ It always comes into play when I see several generations of my children playing together. I just can’t describe the feeling.

Now it is the students’ turn to care about their beloved teacher and the institution he helped build. This Thursday, the Chris’ Jazz Café will host a fundraiser for the Clef Club that will bring together nearly two dozen current and former students and faculty representing a who’s who of the jazz scene in Philly and beyond.

Programming will include jazz musicians based or raised in Philadelphia over several generations, including saxophonists Immanuel Wilkins and Bobby Zankel; pianists Orrin Evans, Joe Block and Micah Graves; drummers Justin Faulkner and Nazir Ebo; trumpeter Arnetta Johnson and guitarist Monnette Sudler, among others.

The event, which will raise money from in-person ticket sales as well as donations from the Pay What You Want livestream from Chris, is also a way for one local jazz institution to give back to another. According to club owner Mark DeNinno, “The Clef Club is an institution that produces luminaries of the jazz scene. For us, it’s like a salmon swimming upstream: each year, a new group of musicians from the Clef Club take the stage as one more step in the progression towards mastering their art.

The money raised during the four-hour concert will be used to finance a $ 600,000 grant from the redevelopment assistance program that the Clef Club received from the state. The funds will help make much-needed improvements to the institution’s aging building on Broad and Fitzwater. “Updating the air conditioning system and lighting, fixing the roof, redoing the bathrooms to make them more accessible to the public, even redoing the sound system, these are the kinds of things for which the money has gone. been expected, ”Hines explained. “It’s about making the Clef Club what it should be.

The partnership took root last summer, when DeNinno offered to donate the venue’s Yamaha grand piano to the Clef Club when Chris switched to a new instrument. Learning about the fundraising campaign, DeNinno came up with the idea of ​​fundraising. “When you walk into the Clef Club you see it’s a really popular environment,” he said. “It’s not the fancy look of the Kimmel Center. It has its scuffs and scratches, but it really gives it character. We have the sobering feeling that this is a real institution that cares about music and students, not so much about putting itself forward.

The Clef Club has been in its current home since 1995, although its history goes back much further. It began life in 1935 as a social club for Local 274, the African American Musicians’ Union in Philadelphia. Hines brought his education program, which he had founded a few years earlier at Settlement Music School, to the Clef Club in 1985.

Hines’ student roster includes jazz stars like bassist Christian McBride and organist Joey DeFrancesco, who studied with him at Settlement. Justin Faulkner left the Clef Club at age 17 to join Branford’s band Marsalis, while recent graduate Immanuel Wilkins is one of music’s most dynamic stars, set to release his second album for Blue Note later this this month. Hines’ current class includes guitarist Leo Steinriede, winner of the 2020 Essentially Ellington Composition and Arrangement Competition at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

While many of these students have returned to perform or support the Clef Club, Hines has long been reluctant to summon his former students for an event like this. “I never want to play with my kids and ask them to do something for me,” he said. “I just want to congratulate and support them. But when that happened and I reached out to them, they were so excited to do it. It looks like a meeting; it’s almost as if they were saying, ‘It’s about time’.

This is certainly true of saxophonist Jaleel Shaw, who began studying with Hines in Settlement when he was just 11, following his teacher in the new Clef Club program. (Ultimately, contact with the COVID-19 exposure likely means Shaw won’t be able to do the concert on Thursday.)

“For me, it’s all about Mr. Hines,” Shaw said. “He’s not just a teacher, he’s a father figure. It means a lot to have that kind of support and encouragement, even years after leaving Philly and building my career. The thing about Mr. Hines is that he loves us all and he really cares about all of us, and to me that’s gold. Sometimes you think you only need that support when you arrive, but we all need support throughout our lives, and I feel like the teacher-student relationship is one that doesn’t. should never really end. With Mr. Hines, it didn’t end with any of his students.

In fact, Hines insists he still sees each of his students as the children they were when they first came under his tutelage. “I went to see Joey DeFrancesco in South recently, and he introduced me to the crowd and said, ‘I’m 50 years old and I still call him Mr. Hines. Well, in my mind I still see little boys. But when I see these grown men and see the level of their performance, it’s just amazing.

7 p.m. Thursday January 13, Chris’ Jazz Café, 1421 Sansom St., $ 25, 215-568-3131, chrisjazzcafe.com