Jazz comes marchin’ in to new digs

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis gets a jazzy present for his 43rd birthday today: a new three-venue home for the Jazz at Lincoln Center program of which he’s artistic director.

Tonight’s opening of the $128-million, 100,000-square-foot facility in New York will feature performances in all three rooms: the Frederick P. Rose Theater, which holds up to 1,231 people and is touted as the first concert hall in the world designed specifically for jazz; the 300- to 600-capacity Allen Room and the 140-seat Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.

Performers will include Marsalis, Tony Bennett, Abbey Lincoln and the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra with Paquito D’Rivera. Tonight’s concerts are by invitation only, but portions of each will be broadcast on PBS as part of the network’s “Live From Lincoln Center” series.

Marsalis gave architect Rafael Vinoly and acousticians feedback about various facilities he’s played around the world that were well suited to jazz so they could study what works and what doesn’t, Jazz at Lincoln Center executive director Derek Gordon said.

Since the Jazz at Lincoln Center program was instituted in 1996, most performances have taken place in Alice Tully Hall and Avery Fisher Hall.

The new complex, housed on two floors of the Time Warner Center five blocks down Broadway from Lincoln Center -- Marsalis leads a New Orleans-style jazz parade today from the old home to the new one -- is aiming to offer more than 450 jazz performance, educational and broadcast events per year. The focus on jazz encompasses programming, acoustics, physical ambience and even the makeup of the groups that will appear there.

“Lincoln Center was built for the Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York City Ballet,” says Jonathan Rose, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s building committee chairman. “Nothing here was designed for the sound, function and feeling of jazz.”

On the Jazz at Lincoln Center website, Marsalis says Rose Hall was built to remedy sound problems that jazz musicians typically face in concert halls designed for orchestras: too much echo, which can muddy the interplay for jazz players. The acoustics also are tailored to balance low notes from drums and bass against higher frequencies of cymbals, which are more regular components of jazz than of classical music.

Other events slated as part of JALC’s opening-week festivities include a “Stand Up for Jazz” program Thursday with Marsalis, Bill Cosby and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and the start of a 17-day Dizzy Gillespie Festival and a three-part blues festival.

“Jazz is a very democratic art form,” Gordon says. “It’s about making music together, about musical conversations, and we hope Jazz at Lincoln Center can have a conversation not only with all of New York but with all the world.”

*

-- Randy Lewis