JAZZ IN NEW YORK

DECEMBER 4-14, 2008

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, IT’S A WONDERFUL TOWN

THE BRONX IS UP AND THE BATTERY’S DOWN

THE PEOPLE RIDE IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND

(Betty Comden and Adolph Green)

A Google search of “Jazz in New York City” yields just over 18,300,000 matches. Like all those searches there are many repetitions, irrelevant, and downright strange matches, but it is a good general indication of the liveliness of the jazz scene in New York. (For comparison, Chicago had 11,600,000 hits, Minneapolis had 1,920,000, and Northfield had 124,000!) So what makes the level of jazz activity in New York 147 times more than that in Northfield? Probably the fact that once Eliot Ness cleaned up the Chicago gangs in the early 1930s, and closed down the clubs and speakeasies the gangs owned and supported there, the center of jazz performance moved to New York City and has remained there ever since. The range of performance venues range from legendary clubs like the Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, and the recently reopened Birdland, to neighborhood hangouts like Cleopatra’s Needle, and Copeland’s, to Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola and the Rose Concert Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center, to Greenwich Village’s intimate Jazz Gallery and Smalls, to performances in churches and even private apartments. From combos to big bands, mainstream to Dixieland, New York offers the opportunity to hear the entire history of jazz in one city.