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| Opportunities & Exposures: Arts |
Up Beat
Derek E. Gordon
09/01/2005
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Eight years ago, Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) debuted at New York’s fine arts
Mecca. Today the world’s largest arts program dedicated to jazz has a new,
permanent home. Last October, JALC celebrated the grand opening of its space on
Broadway at 60th Street in the new Time Warner Center. The occasion was as
significant to the growth of a novel nonprofit arts model as it was to the
continuity of our original American art form.
Together with its predecessor,
the blues, jazz was one of the first musical genres to develop in the United
States.
 Its rich musical tradition—names like Armstrong, Ellington, Goodman
and Holiday are legendary—and proclivity toward innovation make jazz the
quintessential American music. But unlike other forms, such as opera, that
flourished in America as they had in Europe through institutionalization and a
strong philanthropic tradition, jazz emerged organically and grew in the
counterculture; there was no infrastructure to support its development. Although
it continued to attract loyal fans, by the 1980s mainstream art and media
critics were declaring jazz dead.
Musicians, jazz lovers and arts
administrators who understood the history and relevance of the genre appealed to
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts to incorporate jazz into its programming.
In 1987, to fill halls that stood empty during the summer, Lincoln Center took a
chance on the idea. Less than a decade later, what began as a summer concert
series became the 12th constituent of Lincoln Center. In 2004 the House of
Swing—as artistic director and guiding visionary Wynton Marsalis calls JALC’s
new home—took its place among America’s great cultural institutions.
To some,
creating a sustaining infrastructure for jazz seemed like a juxtaposition of two
opposing forces—improvisation versus establishment. Some feared that jazz, a
virtually indescribable art form (Louis Armstrong’s summation: “Man, if you
gotta ask, you’ll never know”) would be smothered by an enduring institution.
Instead, it flourished.
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