NYC Winter Jazzfest is thrilled to announce the initial list of artists to be featured at the 20th annual NYC Winter Jazzfest! Please mark your calendars for January 10-18, 2024.

“Yes, it’s our 20th season,” says founder and producer Brice Rosenbloom. “We began in 2005 at the Knitting Factory on Leonard St., with the mission of highlighting music that deserved wider attention while the APAP conference was in town, and to a large degree that mission remains. But over the years that mission grew, to focus on artists with meaningful messages, in the desire to serve as a beacon for racial and gender justice, action on climate change, migration, mass incarceration and other pressing issues that affect so many of us.”

The overarching goal remains as well: to grow the audience for jazz, with a broad programming mission that speaks to the diversity of the New York scene, presenting the widest spectrum of what jazz can be. We continue in January 2024, proud as ever to support a host of today’s most fearless and creative musicians as we push boundaries and imagine new possibilities for our music scene and our world.

A number artists who’ve gone on wide industry acclaim including GRAMMYs and MacArthurs and secure major platforms for their work are among our past performers including: influential musicians including Jon Batiste, Kamasi Washington, Gregory Porter, Jason Moran, Vijay Iyer, esperanza spalding, Gretchen Parlato and more. These artists look back to their early WJF appearances as pivotal in terms of artistic growth and audience growth as well. Participants from our very earliest WJF days performing at this year’s festival include Marc Ribot, Jason Moran, Burnt Sugar, The Arkestra Chamber, Nduduzo Makhathini, Meg Okura, Jason Lindner, Aaron Parks, Mary Halvorson, and we’re honored to welcome them back.

At the same time, in unique ways we are celebrating artists we’ve lost who will always be at the root of this music and our community: Max Roach, Sarah Vaughan, Alice Coltrane, James Mtume, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Curtis Fowlkes, Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra.

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