The historic St. James Church, a red brick structure, is seen on a sunny day in downtown Tampa, situated on a grassy corner lot adjacent to a new apartment complex and a paved sidewalk.
St. James Church, now the African American History Museum in Tampa, Florida. Credit: Tampa Bay History Center

Last fall when Rock the Park celebrated 15 years of no-cover concerts, the Tampa Downtown Partnership told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that it was planning a quarterly jazz concert series set for Central Park within the Encore development near the former site of a famed Black Tampa neighborhood commonly referred to as The Scrub.

Reminiscent of last year’s “Central Ave. Live,” series, the Central Park Jazz Jam brings music back to a neighborhood that was once the bustling Black business and lifestyle district of Tampa (Ray Charles and Ella Fitzgerald are just two artists who passed through).

Pianist Nick Peters, a regular at Corner Club’s jazz night in Old Seminole Heights, gets the honors of kicking the no-cover series off inside the city’s African American History Museum. (African American History Museum at Encore!, Tampa)

There’s no cover for the Central Park Jazz Jam with Nick Peters Quartet happening Tuesday, Dec. 16 at Encore!’s African American History Museum at Encore in Tampa.

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This article appears in Dec. 04 – 10, 2025.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...