Jazz Congress
January 8-9
Unity Jazz Festival
January 10-11
Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference
January 10-14
Winter JazzFest
January 9-15

Back in the days of my misspent youth, New York City’s biggest season for jazz was the early summer, which featured the Newport Jazz Festival, a Knitting Factory-centric festival, and 92NY’s “Jazz in July,” the latter being the only series that’s a going concern these days. Since well before the start of this century, though, early January is the hottest time on the jazz calendar, musically speaking.

The central tent pole for this activity is the annual conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters. In the second week of the new year, thousands of artists and presenters converge upon the New York Hilton for APAP, which covers every aspect of the performing arts, from Shakespeare companies to Led Zeppelin tribute bands. As the vice president of programming at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Jason Olaine, puts it:  “For people who put conferences together, you’re looking for places to go when it’s cheapest. And wintertime in New York City is going to be about the cheapest you can get space and hotels.”

To start with, APAP has long attracted hundreds of performers to the Hilton. Then the founding publisher of JazzTimes, Ira Sabin, launched a jazz industry conference at the same time, and it was followed by other events, such as the International Association of Jazz Educators conference and then Jazz Connect. For most of the 2000s, the biggest jazz performance series has been the Winter JazzFest, a weekend-long run of musical marathons at clubs across downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Now, in the post-pandemic period, the major industry event is Jazz Congress, held on the premises of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Starting last year, JALC also offers a multi-venue marathon weekend of its own, the Unity Jazz Festival.  

Jazz Congress is the brainchild of a former JazzTimes editor, Lee Mergner, who has collaborated with JALC on this annual event since 2018. Mr. Olaine stresses that it is an “important meeting place for everybody in the industry. … These conferences allow us to have a human connection with each other and also to get re-inspired by all the music. 

“You want to see as much music as you possibly can because wherever you live, you’re never going to be in the center of the jazz universe unless you’re in New York. So everybody makes an effort to get out here. I know venues and presenters who come to these conferences and by the time they leave, they’ve already booked their whole season,” he says.

This year marks the first time since the pandemic that the Congress is spread over two days. Included are panels such as “Jazz on the Cutting Edge: Technology and its Evolving Role in the Arts” and a keynote address by the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson. 

There are also panels and concerts celebrating recently fallen heroes, such as the legendary drummer Roy Haynes, who died in November at 99, and the venerated guitarist Russell Malone. Already the subject of a tribute in these pages, Malone will be honored in an all-star show at the Appel Room featuring Diana Krall, Ron Carter, Monty Alexander, Christian McBride, and at least a dozen other marquee names.

The Unity Jazz Festival offers a warmer and dryer alternative to the Winter JazzFest. “We wanted to do a festival-style event here at JALC where we made use of as many of our rooms as possible: Dizzy’s, the Appel Room, and the Ertegun atrium space,” Mr. Olaine says. “We make a point to program some music that you might not normally hear on our Jazz at Lincoln Center stages — as well as some varieties of jazz that are not generally heard at Winter JazzFest. So we wanted to show all the different kinds of flavors and colors of jazz, as an enhancement to the WJF.” 

Among the more ambitious offerings at the second Unity Jazz Fest this year are a “Sun Ra Celebration with (pianist) Sullivan Fortner & His Galactic Friends,” as well as three extraordinary singers, Rachel Price, Imani Rousselle, and Tatiana Eva-Marie, all in their own slots on Friday. The big-ticket item on Saturday is a Roy Haynes memorial concert featuring former Haynes sidemen, fellow drummers, members of the Haynes family, and superstars such as Dee Dee Bridgewater.

It needs to be stressed that these two JALC productions are in addition to a very full schedule at the Winter JazzFest, as well as hundreds of performance showcase events at APAP itself in the Hilton. There, the major jazz venue is the New York Suite on the fourth floor, which promises “two great days of jazz.”

Whatever your taste — from the earliest New Orleans ensembles to the most modern fusion or postmodern avant-garde music, from solo pianos to full orchestras — there’s something here for every taste in jazz, and they’re even worth braving the elements to hear.