With His New Undead Jazz Fest, Brice Rosenbloom Makes It Plain That the Historic Genre Is Still Taking Vital Breaths
In a city known for the world's greatest summer jazz festivals, few entrepreneurs launch a new one without sounding a little bit nervous. So Brice Rosenbloom's confidence is novel. As the moving force behind the Undead Jazzfest, which debuts this weekend at venues in and around Bleecker Street, the promoter has a track record. And a clear agenda.
“The one thing we're trying to fight against is this notion that jazz is this mysterious code people are trying to break," Mr. Rosenbloom said recently. The 36-year-old native of Louisville, Ky., who arrived in the city in 1997 after a brief stint working for the San Francisco Jazz Festival, has traversed the sometimes combative terrain of New York's jazz and improvised music scenes. Among numerous gigs uptown and down, he's booked seasons for the Knitting Factory (when it was still a TriBeCa mecca for outr rock and jazz) and Jazz at Lincoln Center (during its inaugural year in the Time-Warner building).
No matter the event, one goal remains constant--and it has a lot to do with the new festival's $35 ticket price, which comes out to slightly less than $1 per act playing on stages at (Le) Poisson Rouge, Kenny's Castaways and Sullivan Hall. “The main thing," Mr. Rosenbloom said, “is to get people in the door."
In a city known for the world's greatest summer jazz festivals, few entrepreneurs launch a new one without sounding a little bit nervous. So Brice Rosenbloom's confidence is novel. As the moving force behind the Undead Jazzfest, which debuts this weekend at venues in and around Bleecker Street, the promoter has a track record. And a clear agenda.
“The one thing we're trying to fight against is this notion that jazz is this mysterious code people are trying to break," Mr. Rosenbloom said recently. The 36-year-old native of Louisville, Ky., who arrived in the city in 1997 after a brief stint working for the San Francisco Jazz Festival, has traversed the sometimes combative terrain of New York's jazz and improvised music scenes. Among numerous gigs uptown and down, he's booked seasons for the Knitting Factory (when it was still a TriBeCa mecca for outr rock and jazz) and Jazz at Lincoln Center (during its inaugural year in the Time-Warner building).
No matter the event, one goal remains constant--and it has a lot to do with the new festival's $35 ticket price, which comes out to slightly less than $1 per act playing on stages at (Le) Poisson Rouge, Kenny's Castaways and Sullivan Hall. “The main thing," Mr. Rosenbloom said, “is to get people in the door."
