From Bobcat to Jazz Boss: How Texas State University Helped Launch Kris Kimura’s Rise from Student Musician to Austin Jazz Club Owner

“There’s way more than he could cover in an hour and 20 minutes,” says Dr. Utah Hamrick, TXST’s director of Jazz Studies, referencing one of Kimura’s recent campus visits for a jazz workshop. “We covered his early days of forming a functioning jazz group, how to go out and get gigs, and how to be a working musician. But we want to do another seminar where we talk more about the entrepreneurial and business side of owning a club.” 

It’s a topic that Kimura lives and breathes every day. Kimura opened Parker Jazz Club in 2018, acquired a stake in the legendary Elephant Room in 2021, and opened the Nica on 4th (next door to Parker) in the fall of 2025. Club ownership is the latest chapter in a life of jazz that started when his mom took a young Kris to see Mel Tormé and his dad bought the 11-year-old an alto saxophone from a San Antonio pawn shop. 

“It’s just been an absolute dream come true,” Kimura said during a visit at Parker, the downtown Austin club that he named for his now 11-year-old son. “So many of my heroes have come to play here. And so many of the local musicians that I looked up to have come to play here. And I’ve also got my guys, my house band, on salary.”

Kimura enrolled in the TXST School of Music in 1996 after being encouraged to apply by Dr. Keith Winking, who founded the school’s Jazz Studies program in 1989. Kimura had previously spent one year at the University of North Texas, but it didn’t go well, and he’d given up on the idea of being a professional musician. 

At Texas State, Kimura says, he got a chance to develop as a musician—both in school and on stages in Austin and San Antonio. He was inspired by older students like Ephraim Owens (trumpet), Elias Haslanger (tenor saxophone), and Freddie Mendoza (trombone). 

“These are guys that were just a little bit older than me, but they were on the scene,” Kimura says. “They were the cats in this town. So I was like, ‘Yeah, I want to go to that school.’” 

Winking, who retired last year, remembers Kimura as “extremely talented and bright, very driven and hardworking.” 

“There are certain students who really stand out,” Winking says. “And you always think, ‘Gee, I’m not sure they really got anything from me, but I got a lot out of them.’ And Kris is one of those.” 

Kimura spent more than 10 years at Texas State as he worked his way through school. He’d take off entire semesters to work jobs and save up money for tuition—sometimes embarking for months as a performer on cruise ships—then return to classes for a semester.

Along the way, Kimura met fellow students who’ve turned into lifelong friends, including pianist Ryan Davis, a longtime collaborator and member of the Parker Jazz Club house band; and Aaron Frescas, a fellow alum of the Bobcat Marching Band who’s now the operations manager for Kimura’s clubs. 

“I loved my time at Texas State,” Kimura says. “They said, ‘All right, you’re kind of sad. We’re going to make you better.’ And I feel like they just pulled me up. I was there a long time. I loved my professors, and I loved the students that I went to school with. Going to Texas State really changed everything for me.” 

Following college, Kimura worked as a touring musician with numerous groups and formed his own band, the Kris Kimura Quintet, which played the “steak and lobster circuit.” 

“For about 20 years in Austin, anywhere there was steak and lobster and jazz, you found us,” he says. “Our home base was Eddie V’s on Fifth and San Jacinto for 14 years. When Three Forks came to town, another steak joint, we were the house band there for almost eight years.” 

The band made good money, but it required a grueling schedule with weekly road trips to places like Houston, San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth, and New Orleans. When Kimura’s son celebrated his first birthday, the band was playing seven to 10 shows per week. It was at that point that Kimura told his wife that he was thinking about opening a club to be more present with his family. (Kimura is married to Jennifer Johnson, a singer and the co-director of the Speech-Language-Hearing Clinic at the TXST Round Rock Campus.) 

“The more successful I was becoming as a musician, the more time I was going to be away from home,” he says. “And so I made that decision. I talked to my band guys, I talked to my wife, I talked to my family.” 

Fortunately for Kimura, one of his fans took an interest in his idea for a jazz club, offering to provide seed money and connect Kimura with other investors.  

“They believed in me and they gave me the opportunity to build this club, and I’m so grateful for it,” Kimura says. “But I had no idea what I was in for. It was eye-opening. Now that I’m eight years in, I’m grateful, but I will say the first three years were horrible. I was required to do things that I didn’t know how to do.” 

Parker Jazz Club weathered the COVID lockdown and found its groove as an upscale jazz showcase, attracting both local bands and national touring acts like Wynton Marsalis and the Count Basie Orchestra. What’s more, Kimura still takes the stage multiple nights a week, performing with the house band as he plays one of his 14 different instruments. 

Kimura’s breadth of experience in jazz has also informed his work as the founder of the Texas Jazz Society, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting and promoting jazz. Started in 2018, the society has three primary objectives: It funds jazz performances at nursing homes; subsidizes the wages of working musicians who play at Parker Jazz Club; and supports high school jazz programs through clinics, workshops, and performance opportunities. 

Parker hosts numerous Austin-area high school jazz bands each year, while allowing the bands to keep the ticket revenues. Kimura’s support of jazz students also extends to TXST. 

The club works with Hamrick to book TXST student jazz trios weekly at Nica on 4th.  

“It’s good for students to get that experience of being the band leader,” Hamrick says. “They have to take responsibility for what tunes they’ll play, making sure everybody knows all the details. It’s good real-world training for the students.” 

TXST faculty members also perform at Nica on 4th with professors like pianist Hank Hehmsoth and bassist Hamrick taking the stage on a regular basis. “He’s been really good about that from the get-go,” Hamrick says.  

Kimura also keeps in touch with TXST when he brings notable jazz acts to Austin to play Parker Jazz Club. When a musician’s schedule allows, he’ll cover the costs for them to travel to San Marcos to put on a clinic for TXST students.  

“There’s this beautiful network that Texas State has created, and I love it,” Kimura says. “I love that I’m a part of it, and I try to continue to be a part of it.” 

And Kimura says he’s always got his eye out for the next generation of jazz talent coming out of San Marcos. 

“Texas State has, in my opinion, done a really good job of not just teaching these kids about music, but teaching them how to be good people,” he says. “And for me, that’s important. If I need to hire a musician and they tell me they went to Texas State, that’s pretty much all I really need to know.”