Text by Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi and Jim Hoey
Now in it’s 8th year, NYC’s Winter Jazzfest sent out an impossible dare to city jazz fans this time in 2012: “Pay the low price of $45 for two nights and we dare you to try to see over 60 acts in four venues around the West Village”.
The clubs that featured bands are some of the oldest, and smaller, rooms in the city: Le Poisson Rouge, Sullivan Hall, The Bitter End, Kenny’s Castaways, and Zinc Bar. In trying to manically beat a path from spot to spot hoping to catch a favorite act, over 4000 music lovers made this year’s festival probably the most successful yet, thanks to the hard work of founders Brice Rosenbloom and Adam Schatz and the promotion efforts of Boom Collective and Search and Restore.
Since the closing of many of the more avant-garde downtown venues like Tonic and the original Knitting Factory, the city has felt a loss in the jazz scene; sure there’s always Lincoln Center, but what about the emerging artists, hungry to push boundaries? At times it’s felt like maybe the old “Jazz is dead” cliche is actually starting to ring true, with so much shifting sand under the feet of those in the scene, so to speak, and everything spreading out to Brooklyn. Here in NYC, that would be unbelievable, unacceptable.
