Back 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.
Steered by its artistic director, the 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’s bookings proudly held the line for what he considered jazz’s defining virtues.
Winter Jazzfest was geared toward disruption.
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.
Persons:
Lincoln Center’s, it’s, Wynton Marsalis, Brice Rosenbloom, Winter
Organizations:
Knitting Factory, Jazz, Lincoln, Lincoln Center
Locations:
—, Lower Manhattan, New York City