Winter Jazzfest celebrates 20 years of jazz exploration and discovery in New York City

One weekend, three stages and an old haunt. In 2005, this was the humble beginnings of a new type of jazz festival, one that fused the sounds and energy of the present day, with the foundational music and spirit of yesteryear. Winter Jazzfest was created to be an experience of jazz exploration. A self-described hotbed of cultural discovery. A bridge made by music.

Today, Winter Jazzfest has expanded to over a week of music across several venues and countless stages, featuring more than 500 artists performing on both sides of the Brooklyn Bridge. At the center of it all is Brice Rosenbloom.

His journey from a high school kid throwing a battle of the bands concert in Louisville to putting on one of the most dynamic music festivals in the world is a story of curiosity and collaboration, with a very important stop in South Africa.

While a sophomore at Northwestern University, Rosenbloom actively organized concerts featuring a wide spectrum of artists, from Tori Amos to George Clinton. However, a pivotal moment that significantly altered his life’s course occurred when he volunteered to assist an African studies professor in bringing South African saxophonist Zim Ngqawana to campus. During that series of performances, Zim persuaded Rosenbloom to study in South Africa. The next year Rosenbloom lived with Ngqawana and immersed himself in the community of jazz players in Johannesburg, writing about the history of South African jazz. In his senior year, Rosenbloom orchestrated another set of concerts for Ngqawana, featuring multiple performances alongside the legendary drummer Max Roach. This unofficial senior project revealed the path he would go on to follow.

Rosenbloom embodies the spirit of jazz in nearly every facet of the festival’s construction. He is quick to point out the importance of the people he has collaborated with to produce the festival over the years. He rarely uses the word “I” when discussing the process of putting on the festival. The curation never leans too far in one direction. The reverence for the musicians of old is as constant as the introduction of young talent, and the two elements are often presented together.

In 2023, Winter Jazzfest rebounded from the forced hiatus that the pandemic imposed, with an outstanding program including a performance by The Sun Ra Arkestra led by the soon-to-be 100-year-old Marshall Allen. This year, the festival returns with an expanded program, including a focus on poetry and a celebration of the creative institution The East, with Shabaka as artist in residence.

The following is a conversation with Rosenbloom about his journey and what to expect at the Winter Jazzfest 2024. The conversation has been edited for clarity.

KMHD: What was your personal introduction to jazz?

Brice Rosenbloom: It came through South African jazz. My brother had a really great vinyl collection. He was into all sorts of music, but specifically what I loved was township jive, Ladysmith Black Mambazo which we came to from Paul Simon. But then we would dig deeper, so it was really like Dollar Brand and Hugh Masekela. Reading that Dollar Brand was inspired by Duke Ellington, that led to checking out Duke, Coltrane and Miles, Charlie Parker.

All my friends growing up in Louisville were in hardcore bands. A buddy was playing drums in a band and another friend had a trumpet player in their band and I said, “Yeah! Do more of that! More horns in the band!”. I was trying to figure out why I was drawn to that sound and realized that I was really into jazz.

There was a club called the Jam Factory in downtown Louisville that had blues and jazz. You didn’t have to be 21 to get in, so we would all go in and pony up the money for a booth and see some incredible music. I got hooked on that cosmopolitan experience. Wanting to be in cities and immersed in different, diverse backgrounds. And I was drawn to Black music.

KMHD: The festival started in 2005. When you were planning that original festival, was it in response to something that was happening within the community of musicians in New York or a response to the bigger festivals? What was the impetus or drive for doing WJF?

Rosenbloom: A little bit of both. The real impetus was attending the APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals) conference for several years prior and noticing that what was happening at the conference, the music that was being showcased, specifically jazz, to me, didn’t really represent what I thought was cool and hip and happening in the scene. And again, this was 20 years ago. So back then, there really were multiple scenes happening in different venues. Downtown scene at Tonic and The Knitting Factory, and the more straight-ahead scene happening at different clubs. There was a Latin scene, international scene, fusion and the beginning of some artists dealing with some hip hop and bringing that together. Unfortunately, now a lot of the scenes have evaporated. And one of the things we’re proud of that we do at WJF is, on those nights of the marathons, we bring that energy back.

My initial inspiration for the festival was to put together a night on multiple stages where I could showcase groups that I thought represented what was happening on the scene and invite my friends and colleagues. It was meant to be a largely industry experience, but we opened tickets to the public as well.

We were really proud of what we put together. Three stages. Eighteen groups. That first year was Vijay Iyer, Burnt Sugar, David Murray, Stefon Harris, The Bad Plus, it was pretty hip. Then we decided it worked so we did it again. After doing it a couple of years at the Knitting Factory on those three stages we moved it up to the village to LPR when it opened and eventually started to expand it to more venues and more days.

We started doing special programming around the festival, not just the marathon. It’s grown! In 2020, before the pandemic, we were an 11-day festival, 172 different groups, 20-plus venues, 17,000 people came out. In 2022 we were ready to pull the trigger on the festival. We had the festival fully booked. Then omicron [the COVID-19 variant] hit in December and, we had to pull the plug and move everything online and postpone some shows. So we came back in 2023 with a more conservative festival in terms of size, intentionally, just because we weren’t sure how people would respond. But they did respond very well, people were excited for it and hungry for it. And we are expecting the same this year.

KMHD: How has your curation approach shifted since 2005? Or has it?

Rosenbloom: I’ve always intentionally wanted to have a broad perspective of what jazz can be. Through my booking experience at different venues around the city before the festival and throughout, I worked at the Knitting Factory, I was the music director at LPR for 10 years and all those experiences were very varied format in terms of genres. But I also worked at Jazz at Lincoln Center, so I had an experience where there was a specific focus on what jazz is. Even though my job at the time was to program music and shows that were not just jazz, where jazz pushed the envelope a little bit, or collaborating with other art forms like dance or poetry. We did a Brazilian series with Hermeto Pascal. The poetry series included Gil Scott Heron, Sonia Sanchez and Oscar Brown Jr.

What I really love about Winter Jazzfest is the opportunity — with the abundance of venues, stages, and days, there’s the opportunity to present a broad spectrum and to celebrate and portray how really rich and vibrant the scene is. And young. That’s the thing I am most proud of … is being able to sustain that spirit of diversity and broadness. To me, if an artist comes to me and says that they are influenced by this, this and this, and I hear it in their in music and I recognize the jazz thread of Black American music and I like them, I’m interested in including it.

KMHD: It’s very hip to me the way you balance more legacy artists and up-and-coming talent. Do you have a particular, reliable resource for getting introduced to new artists?

Rosenbloom: All channels are definitely, open. From labels, agents, managers, artists themselves. I also want to point out and offer gratitude for the partners and co-curators that I have worked with in the past years. In the beginning, it was individuals like Adam Schatz at Search and Restore who came to me with ideas and he became integrally involved in the festival. And of course hats off to Meghan Stabile, who passed away last year. With her and Revive music we presented some incredible sets. She was instrumental in introducing me to Robert Glasper. Long before Kamasi Washington played at Winter Jazzfest, she mentioned him to me. Esperanza Spalding played when she was very young, due to a show that she (Stabile) put together with Revie. That has been a part of the festival and continues to be a part of the festival andI give a tremendous amount of gratitude to Meghan and her vision. And we are proud to be able to honor her continually. It’s hard for me to talk about it sometimes because we were close.

We talked about the legacy artists. We are committed to presenting the legacy artists because that’s the DNA of the music, but similarly we are committed to representing the styles that Brian and Meghan brought because that is the current the DNA of jazz community. We are happy to celebrate where the community is right now. We are thankful to them and all the artists and musicians who have help us grow.

KMHD: Are there any artists in years past that you were close to booking that slipped through the cracks?

Rosenbloom: I don’t know if I have that regret. There are artists that we have chased that we were eventually able to present because there have been so many years of the festival.

KMHD: That’s a better a question then. Who was the most challenging chase, if you will?

Rosenbloom: Well early on — I wouldn’t say it was challenging but it was a process. Meshell Ndegeocello was our artist-in-residence in 2019. It was a really sweet process. She wanted to meet and have an extended conversation in person. I felt like she was interviewing me to make sure our intentions were good. In the end, it was really wonderful. We had presented her earlier on at the Knitting Factory, but that was just her doing a set. I think she wanted to make sure we were genuine in what we were asking her to do, because she really put in the time to curate four beautiful sets of music. And she participated in a panel conversation and let us interview her for our program guide. She was a very enthusiastic artist in residence that year.

KMHD: What kind of panels do you have programmed this year?

Rosenbloom: There will be a gender equity panel, a panel on technology including discussing blockchain and NFTs.

There’s a conversation we are putting together to discuss the history of The East. The East was a community center in Crown Heights Brooklyn from the late ‘60s until the early ‘80s that really fostered community around arts and education. It really nurtured pride in the Black community and their backgrounds because the people in the neighborhood didn’t feel that their kids were properly learning that in their schools. Also at The East there were these incredible jazz hangs would happen. They had a little performance space and that’s where Pharoah Sanders recorded “Live At The East” and James Mtume “Land of the Blacks.” JuJu had a record, Max Roach would play there often. So, we are going to have a conversation about that. We are also trying to screen the documentary from 2021 about it called “The Sun Rises In The East.”

And on Jan. 14 we are doing a live concert celebrating the music that came from The East. Gary Bartz and Billy Hart, who played there regularly, are playing. Gary Bartz is music directing along with Luke Stewart and they will be joined by Shabaka, Moor Mother, Julius Rodriguez, Nicole Mitchell, and others. We are really proud to celebrate the heritage, the cultural heritage, of that neighborhood. The venue is called the Crown Hill Theater and is less than half a mile from where The East used to be.

KMHD: Are there any other new elements about the festival that you are excited about?

Rosenbloom: We are collaborating for the first time with Jazz Congress. We are doing a talk series on Jan. 11 with Shabaka, Esperanza, and Ndouso, and they are going to chat about the universality of jazz and the idea of looking at it from a non-Western lens. That night at Dizzy’s we curated a night with Shabaka and Joe Lavano so having a presence up at Jazz in Lincoln Center will be interesting for us. We are doing a night where we celebrate Ryuichi Saka’s music, actually, on his birthday. Also another birthday, Max Roach’s birthday is Jan. 10 and we are presenting Tyshawn Sorey, doing his rendition of the record “Members Don’t Get Weary” and that is part of series called “Take 2″ where we play the record in its’ entirety. Giles Peterson, who picked that record as one of his top 10 jazz records is going to host that show followed by a DJ set. Super excited about that one.

Our closing night, we are going to be at Brooklyn Steel, which is a big venue, MonoNeon is essentially curating that night with friends. It’s Knower, Louis Cole, Georgia Anne Muldrow. That’s going to be a fun night. In some ways that’s also in the spirit of Meghan and Revive brought us. She is one of the first people to introduce me to Mono. That’s going to be exciting.

And there is a bit of focus on poetry and spoken word this year. There is the poetry of Sun Ra — that show with Mahagony L Browne and Jive Poetics, along with Carl Hancock Rux and Moor Mother, Abiodun Oyewole from The Last Poets. Saul Williams will be at the festival. It will be the 20th anniversary of his book “Said the Shotgun to the Head,” so he is going to be reading from that book and that is on the marathon on Jan. 13. Ursala Rucker will be at the festival. We are collaborating with Arist Nova Workshop and Mark Christman in Philadelphia and we curated a night at NuBlu as part of the marathon. Ursla is part of that night and so is Marshall Allen. Saul Williams is also part of that night. There is another big-name poet that I cannot name yet but we will announce soon. I’m excited to bring the poetry tradition to the festival.

KMHD: Any recommendations about for a first-time festival goer on how to approach the marathons?

Rosenbloom: Yeah! Our message is discovery. Understand going into it that you will discover new music. And with that in mind, if you show up to a venue that might be full and there is a line, don’t worry. Just head to the next venue. We actually have a system online that you can pull up on your phone where you can see real-time capacity updates. We monitor capacities and list that on that page so you can see if an event is full. If there is a long line you can head to another venue.

KMHD: That’s awesome.

Rosenbloom: People really appreciate the info, especially if it’s really cold. But it was in the 70s in 2020 so who knows?

NYC is already an attraction but WJF is a unique New York experience you can’t find anywhere else. That idea of not just discovery, but — you find yourself in a venue, sometimes big sometimes small, and you’re shoulder to shoulder with an artist you just saw at a different venue. It’s such a musician’s hang. We will have 600 to 700 musicians performing the entire week, and a lot of them are hanging especially on the marathon nights. It’s that great energy that is reminiscent in the hanging out at those different jazz clubs of New York’s past.