Jazz
Milestone venue gives jazz a home in New York

By Paul de Barros
Seattle Times jazz critic

MARY ALTAFFER / AP Jazz great Wynton Marsalis, left, leads musicians down Broadway yesterday to kick off the opening of the new home of Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York. Frederick P. Rose Hall is the first performance, education and broadcasting facility custom-built for jazz.

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

Other links Search event listings

NEW YORK — "Welcome to the House of Swing," said Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of jazz at Lincoln Center last night, as he celebrated the grand opening of Frederick P. Rose Hall, new home for the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.

It was a simple but heartfelt greeting he had been waiting to say for nearly a decade and may well signal a seismic shift in the history of the music.

Rose Hall is the first concert venue ever designed specifically for jazz.

An art form that originated in America just under 100 years ago, jazz usually has been on the outside looking in. With a hall of its own in the center of America's largest city, the music takes its place at the table with the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic, at the center of American cultural life.

Longtime observers have a variety of opinions about the significance, impact, meaning and potential of this cultural shift.

"I couldn't have imagined, let's say 50 years ago, when I first came to New York that anything like this would ever happen," said Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute for Jazz Studies, in Rutgers, N.J. "It's a great achievement. It's almost like a minor miracle. We've never seen anything like this for jazz before."

Designed by Rafael Viñoly, the $128 million hall has three components that address jazz's intimacy and majesty: the Rose Theater, which seats 1,100 to 1,233, depending on a flexible seating configuration; the Allen Room, with 310-500 seats, also flexible; and Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, a 140-seat night club. Other components include an education center, recording studio and a jazz hall of fame.

The halls are now home to the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and also will host other groups.

Since 1991, the LCJO has performed at the Lincoln Center campus, six blocks from Rose Hall's spot between the twin towers of the Time Warner Center, on Columbus Circle.

The views of Central Park and midtown Manhattan are splendid, particularly through the Allen Room's 50- by 90-foot, slanted glass wall with a checker-board grid.
 
Some critics have suggested that "institutionalizing" jazz in a style parallel to classical music goes against the music's spontaneous, improvised grain.

Morgenstern answered: "It's not a form of embalming the music. There is attention paid to history [in Jazz at Lincoln Center's programming] but there's contemporary stuff, too."

George Wein, founder of the Newport Jazz Festival and producer of jazz festivals worldwide, speculated that Rose Hall will have a ripple effect.

"When a city like New York has an institution like this, musicians in other cities are going [to] ask, 'Why don't we have something like this in our city?' "

"This is not just another jazz club with a restaurant," said Jim Eigo, publicist for Iridium, a nearby club. "This is a powerful arts institution. I think all the clubs are going to be thinking real hard about their programming."

Over its 13 years, Jazz at Lincoln Center has earned a reputation for taking a conservative, "classical" orientation toward jazz, presenting established repertory and adhering to a narrow definition of jazz, rather than contemporary, experimental work.

For a musician working on the edges of the tradition, such as New York bassist Ben Allison, that means a "wait-and-see" attitude for Rose Hall.

"Lincoln Center has had this controversy swirling around it, though people are a little more sophisticated in how they view the question now," said Allison, "But it's been a somewhat insular scene over there and it remains to be seen how far they open that up."

Tradition and family were the themes at the inaugural show in the Rose Theater featuring the LCJO and a cavalcade of famous guests, including Tony Bennett, Abbey Lincoln, Joe Lovano and Cyro Baptista. (Pianist Bill Charlap played Dizzy's Club, and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra opened the Allen Room.)

Bennett and Lincoln contributed romantic and soulful ballads, respectively, and tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano lit up the room with "Body and Soul." The New Orleans clarinetist tickled the New Orleans classic, "Dippermouth Blues" and Brazilian percussion Cyro Baptista ignited "Forró For All."

The acoustics of the beautiful new hall, with two wraparound balconies, seats behind the stage, and large light fixtures on the ceiling that turn different colors, proved warm and well blended, with moving parts easy to pick out, but nothing too crisp or sharp.

At the end of the second set, Marsalis, who turned 43 last night, featured LCJO family members, climaxing with Wynton's famous New Orleans bunch: father Ellis (piano) and brothers Branford (tenor saxophone), Jason (drums) and Delfeayo (trombone).

"I'm beyond impressed," said Anne Drummond, a jazz flutist who grew up in Seattle and now lives in New York. "This means we will have to work very hard to find more jazz fans to fill these seats. And that's a good thing."

Paul de Barros: pdebarros@seattletimes.com or 206-464-3247