In 2005 — when the first NYC Winter Jazzfest was held at the Knitting Factory in lower Manhattan, and Jazz at Lincoln Center’s multimillion-dollar facilities had recently opened on the Upper West Side — it was clear which represented the establishment, and which was proposing an alternative. Today, it’s not such an easy distinction.
Steered by its artistic director, Pulitzer Prize-winning trumpeter and retro jazz philosopher Wynton Marsalis, Jazz at Lincoln Center was cultivating an older and affluent audience, adjacent to the opera-going crowd. Marsalis’ bookings proudly held the line for what he considered jazz’s defining virtues. Two decades later, those things are still true.
Winter Jazzfest was geared toward disruption. The mid-2000s were lean years for the music: Online file sharing hit jazz musicians especially hard, and the fallout from 9/11 left many live-music venues closed throughout New York City.
Brice Rosenbloom, Winter Jazzfest’s founder, positioned it as both an infusion of crucial life support and a challenge to some of jazz’s passively dominant trends. The festival’s biggest target, perhaps, was the idea that you could draw any stark dividing lines through music: Pop-friendly, fusion-driven, acoustic and tradition-revering improvisers coexisted on the festival’s bill, which in that first year unfolded across three stages on a single night at the Knit.
New York jazz lost its flagship summertime festival in 2009, leaving Winter Jazzfest as the biggest game in town; since then, it has grown into more than a week of concerts and satellite events. Every year, it offers a full buffet of the current flavors in jazz at a mix of theaters, rock halls and small rooms.
The 20th annual Winter Jazzfest marathons took place over the weekend, in lower Manhattan on Friday night and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Saturday. From the sound of things, no matter how dark things may look in the wider world, the state of improvised music appears strong.
So strong, in fact, that Winter Jazzfest now has competition, of a sort. Jazz at Lincoln Center this past weekend inaugurated its own two-night marathon, the ambitiously titled Unity Jazz Festival, with 16 sets on three stages at the Columbus Circle facility. The bookings were more diverse than what Marsalis usually allows on his main stages (they were much closer to the variety at Dizzy’s Club, the smallest and most informal room at Jazz at Lincoln Center). The festival suggested a concerted effort by the center to participate in a conversation that it often keeps outside its walls.
There are extenuating reasons Jazz at Lincoln Center may have picked this weekend to mount its own festival: Namely, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters’ annual conference is held in mid-January, bringing industry professionals and performers to New York. It’s part of what made Rosenbloom pick these dates in the first place.
But the decision to place another festival right on top of Winter Jazzfest, with a similarly diversified booking strategy, couldn’t help but highlight how much has been flipped upside-down in jazz over the past 20 years. A once-insurgent festival is now so established, and its stylistic dictum so enthusiastically accepted, that even the most institutional presenter in jazz is emulating it.
I spent the weekend bouncing between Winter Jazzfest and Unity, and found that on the Winter Jazzfest front, the marathons are working as well as they have in years. The festival had been victim to its own success recently, spreading itself too thin across lower Manhattan and giving most listeners a logistical headache. Now, it has scaled back, focusing on guaranteeing high-quality listening experiences in fewer venues.
Virtuoso alto saxophonist Steve Lehman held a big crowd in thrall at the Superior Ingredients Rooftop in Williamsburg (insulated, luckily) as he played a set celebrating Anthony Braxton, issuing unbroken, topographically even eighth notes over an urgent undercurrent driven by Matt Brewer on bass and Damion Reid on drums. It was one of those heartening Winter Jazzfest moments, when you find yourself surrounded by hundreds of under-40 ears, at a venue unused to jazz, cheering loudly for improvisers.
Other highlights came from Roy Nathanson and the Jazz Passengers, honoring their recently departed trombonist, Curtis Fowlkes, at the Bowery Ballroom, and the slow, murky immersions of Tyshawn Sorey’s trio (Aaron Diehl on piano and Harish Raghavan on bass), making uncanny creative use of jazz’s classic repertoire at Le Poisson Rouge.
Just before they took the stage, Samora Pinderhughes had just finished up a spellbinding set, accompanied by a small choir. Later that evening, the same stage hosted an uneven but ultimately unforgettable performance of Pharoah Sanders’ “Harvest Time,” by an all-star band that included guitarist Tisziji Muñoz.
This year’s Winter Jazzfest began Jan. 10, with a performance by Sorey at Public Records in Brooklyn, revisiting Max Roach’s epochal LP “Members, Don’t Git Weary.” The festival continues through this Thursday, when virtuoso bassist and meme-making prankster Mononeon convenes a group of musicians (and comedian Hannibal Buress) at Brooklyn Steel.
Unlike Winter Jazzfest, which rewards a quick musical metabolism and demands sprinting around in the cold, Unity Fest provided an enjoyable environment for older audience members, as well as some disabled listeners. The lush facilities can’t compete on the level of energy with a downtown music marathon, but they had their creature comforts. The shows allowed contemporary jazz to feel both alive and manageable.
Ideally, Unity Fest amounts to a promise of more open roads ahead. The festival was dedicated to Funmi Ononaiye, a Jazz at Lincoln Center programmer, longtime DJ, percussionist and beloved music advocate who blanketed the New York scene. He played a big role in planning Unity Fest, even as he battled illness; his death last month at 55 left New York’s jazz scene bereaved. Ononaiye was known to have a talent for making all listeners feel welcome at the shows he presented. If this festival pushes Jazz at Lincoln Center’s future programming in that direction, his legacy is secure. — NYT
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