In 1982, Giovanna Joyce founded Kimball's Jazz Club in San Francisco with Joe Henderson and Joanne Brackeen as the first performance. Jazz artists performing at Kimball's featured Stan Getz, Charlie Haden, McCoy Tyner, Earl Fatha Hines, Denny Zeitlin, Pete Escovedo and many other legendary jazz musicians. Imbesi recounts "I was playing piano during dinner and at 8pm everyone left for the opera or symphony. I suggested to owner Kimball Allen that we have some jazz and he said OK. That's how Kimball's Jazz began, and I was booking the artists and essentially running the marketing, sound and graphics."