Q&A: Brice Rosenbloom On Bringing Back NYC Winter Jazzfest Post Lockdown And The Fest’s Long History

Today (January 12) marks the kick off of NYC Winter Jazzfest throughout New York City. The seven-day event will feature a wide array of performances, including Grammy nominee Samara Joy, Sun Ra Arkestra, a night honoring the late jaimie branch, Julius Rodriguez, Nate Mercereau and more, as well as multiple panel discussions.

The festival, which opens tonight with New Standards Live, curated by Terri Lyne Carrington, is the brain child of New York-based promoter Brice Rosenbloom. I spoke with Rosenbloom about how the festival is rebounding from COVID, some of the big discovery artists from past years, blending the history of jazz with the present and much more.

Steve Baltin: How many years have you been doing this now?

Brice Rosenbloom: This is our nineteenth season, minus the two that we had to take off. Although we did virtual versions during the pandemic.

Baltin: You had two years forced off. Did that allow you to think about things you wanted to change up?

Rosenbloom: So, the first year 2021, we knew we were not going to do any in-person festival. We just did what we could to stay engaged with our audience. We did a couple of performances that were pre-taped, edited, and then streamed out. But mostly that year, 2021, we engaged our audience with conversations. We’ve done a pretty robust talk series for about the past six years with the festival, touching on issues of social justice, jazz and gender, international travel issues, industry conversations, one-on-one interviews with artists. So that year, 2021, we had a really nice robust conversation series. [In] 2022, we had a full festival planned. We were ready to go. We had funding from the SBA (Small Business Association) that our close friends at NIVA (National Independent Venue Association) were able to secure for us and independent promoters and venues and festivals around the country. So, we were eyeballing the rise of Omicron. I was home at my parents’ house in Louisville on Thanksgiving, and we got the alert on CNN about this new strain coming out of South Africa. And I immediately was like, “Oh, no, I’m really concerned about this.” So we kept our eyes on it. And of course, it increased to the point where just before Christmas, everyone was cancelling events and festivals and showcases. And we had to make the call the day before Christmas last year to turn everything, either cancel it or pivot it online. We postponed a couple of the shows that we could. But I had the money to pay talent and to pay musicians and my team. And we decided to do a pretty strong week-long online virtual series. So we sent musicians to studios, venues, had them record short sets. And then we edited all that into six days of content, which we nightly then released with radio hosts, introducing artists between sets. So we basically went from being a live festival producer to a TV, media content producer. And that was an incredible experience. It was a lot of work. But I’m really proud of what we were able to pull off. And more than anything, keeping my team working, keeping musicians working, because we had this money that we were obligated to spend.

Baltin: How has that impacted this year’s festival?

Rosenbloom: So this year going into the festival, I’m a little bit traumatized from that experience of last year. And I’m at this point now of sheer relief. We’re a week away from the festival, nothing’s going to stop us. We’re back, we’ve got a strong lineup. In 2020, the last time we were in person, we welcomed 17,000 people over the course of 11 days and 21 venues, and we had 172 different groups performing and over 700 musicians. So that was the biggest we ever were. We’re scaled back this year, intentionally knowing that we’re coming out of the pandemic, and we want to be a little safer. So it’s a seven-day festival, over 100 groups, 500 musicians, we’re in 17 different venues. Our signature experience, which is our two-day marathon is on January 13 and 14. We’re doing seven venues in Manhattan, and we’re going to be in seven venues in Brooklyn on the Saturday. And so, people get a festival pass, and just like any multi-stage festival, they can bounce around between the different venues, small and large, go see groups that they know. But we really stress the experience of discovery. So we are confident no matter where or when you show up to a venue, you’re going to find something great, you’re going to discover some new music.

Baltin: Has there been that one artist for you that’s really been the great discovery from previous jazz fests?

Rosenbloom: There are so many. In our very first year, we were at the Knitting Factory in 2005 on three stages. And artists like Vijay Iyer, Jason Moran, the next year, Meshell Ndegeocello, a couple years later, Robert Glasper performed very early in his career. Jon Batiste performed, maybe 2008. Kamasi Washington performed very early in his career. So we’ve been really proud that that Winter Jazzfest has been an experience that has helped artists early in their career. Samara Joy is performing on Monday, January 16 at LPR. We’re thrilled she’s going to be there. I was fortunate to present her last year opening up for Gregory Porter at Kings Theatre for an annual Valentine’s Day show that I’ve been doing with Gregory. Gregory was also a Winter Jazzfest early performer. So, that idea of discovering new talent is really a part and parcel of the festival experience. And intentionally, we launched Winter Jazzfest in 2005 during the APAP conference, the Arts Presenters Conference, which is a professional industry long weekend event where presenters come in from all over the world to shop for talent, not just in jazz, of course, but music and theater and dance and opera. But when I would attend APAP before I started the festival, I felt that the jazz that was presented at the festival did not represent what I thought was cool and hip and happening in the downtown scene and so many different scenes back then that we had in jazz. And so it was an opportunity to show my colleagues, “Hey, this is what I think is cool and interesting.” And the first year it sold out, second year, every year it essentially sold out, we were able to expand it to multiple venues, multiple days. And we just had this really great trajectory of growth. And so that idea of showcasing talent, new talent that I want colleagues to discover is just integral to the festival’s history and future. And then, in more recent years we’ve had some other sub-secondary missions, just to shine a spotlight on issues of social justice that musicians might be including in their music or making a commitment to gender equity in our programming.

Baltin: I’m speaking with Terri Lyne Carrington tomorrow.

Rosenbloom: Yeah, we’re thrilled to be a part of the New Standards Live Show, which will be the New York debut of her project. It’s rooted in the book that she published through the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. We’ve been working with Berklee and with New School on this Jazz and Gender series for a number of years. In 2018, we hosted our first Jazz and Gender talk with Angela Davis, esperanza spalding, Terri Lyne Carrington, and a few others. And the most memorable moment in that talk was Angela Dav saying, “Why is the jazz community so ass backwards, in this day and age, when it comes to gender equity, when the jazz movement in the 1960s was the soundtrack, the flag bearer of the movement. Why is it not leading the movement now?” And that was when we were seeing in 2018, a lot of MeToo reckoning happening in other industries, but we weren’t really feeling it so much in jazz. So, there was clearly an opportunity and in past several years there’s been great work, including what Terri Lyne has started with Berklee, along with some other organizations.

Baltin: Sage Bava and I interviewed Robert Glasper last month. One of the things that we discussed at length was, how he feels that jazz is a little too sedentary, that the people who protect the legacy are way too set in the idea of this is what jazz is supposed to be. So how do you make sure that the fest is both classic, but at the same time moves forward?

Rosenbloom: I’m proud of the fact that we have a really broad spectrum of what we believe jazz can be. So our mission is not to say that this is what jazz is one thing. For us, it’s so many things and it’s growing and progressing. And I’m often asked, “How do you decide how to include an artist?” I’m not interested in mimicking some of the larger festivals that just use the word jazz on their festival as a marketing term. And of course, as a side note, of course we recognize the importance of black American music as the root and influence of everything we do. But in terms of specifically, what is jazz and why are we presenting an artist? If an artist specifically says that black American music and jazz are an influence in their music and I can hear it. And of course, I think the artist is good and worthy of being showcased, then I’m interested in including them.

Baltin: After people come to this, what’s the best thing that you can hear as the promoter either on social media or people walking out of a venue?

Rosenbloom: Some of the best experiences are, you’re at a venue, you’re discovering something brand new and you look next to you and there’s Ravi Coltrane or Brandee Younger standing next to you enjoying that same moment. So the idea is you’re rubbing shoulders with the musicians that you just saw play, they’re out for the same reason you are, to discover, to support musicians. And it’s that energy that we’ve been missing for three years, of course. It’s also just a reminder when you’re in it, especially at one of the marathon nights, you’re feeling the vibrancy and the vitality of this scene. And one of the other things we’re incredibly proud about is the amount of young groups that are performing, that we’re able to present. Again, it just shows that the music is alive. The youthful energy of the newer groups is intoxicating, for me personally, knowing that the future is going to be long and bright in this music.