The first days of January in New York - a city already famous for never sleeping - are exceptionally full of music-related activity—from industry conferences like APAP and Jazz Congress to public-facing events like Winter Jazzfest, the Unity Jazz Festival, and globalFEST. People come from far and wide to take the temperature of the music for the coming year.
And that temperature can often feel… cold.
Early January—when the city is still shaking off the holidays and the streets are sharp with winter wind—might seem like an unlikely time to attract visitors. But that timing is no accident.
Like so much history, music is often moved by questions of real estate. Not physical space so much as calendar real estate. The lull after December leaves just enough open terrain for conferences, festivals, showcases, and meetings to coexist.
It starts with APAP. Since the 1950s, the Association of Performing Arts Professionals—originally a university concert-managers organization—has held its annual gathering in New York, giving artists a chance to showcase their work for presenters and programmers. It’s an industry convening, not a public festival, oriented toward the people who decide what gets booked and where. This year, APAP runs January 9th through 13th.
But no single conference can capture the full depth of any one scene. Which is part of what led promoter Brice Rosenbloom to launch Winter Jazzfest twenty-one years ago. What began as a one-night showcase has grown into what The New York Times calls “the city’s most renowned jazz festival.
”This year, Winter Jazzfest presents roughly one hundred performances across Manhattan and Brooklyn, January 8th through 13th. For those of us who live here, it’s become one of the great engines of discovery—a reminder of how much music can be heard, and how accessible culture can be, in New York. It also functions as an after-hours showroom, taking advantage of the fact that so many industry professionals are already in town.
Winter Jazzfest wasn’t the only event to grow out of APAP week. In 2003, globalFEST was created as a one-night international music showcase, bringing artists from dozens of countries to perform for both the public and the presenters already in New York. Born out of a desire to combat isolationism, globalFEST builds cultural bridges through music. This year, it takes place January 11th at Lincoln Center.
If live performance is one engine of the jazz economy, education has long been the other. For many years, that role was filled by the International Association for Jazz Education, whose January conference—often in New York—brought together educators, students, and jazz professionals.
I remember my father and I once spent an entire day at the bar of the Hilton Hotel where the conference was being held. We didn’t register—we just hung out in the lobby—and still managed to schmooze with nearly everyone in attendance. You didn’t need a badge to get involved. You just had to get close enough to the action to make it worthwhile.
When IAJE dissolved in 2008, it left a void. That space was later filled by Jazz Congress, produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2018. Jazz Congress is a two-day industry gathering—panels, workshops, networking—focused on expanding jazz’s audience and addressing the realities of the field. This year, it runs January 7th and 8th.
Jazz Congress eventually added a public-facing counterpart. The Unity Jazz Festival, launched in 2024, is a multi-stage winter celebration at Jazz at Lincoln Center—intergenerational, multicultural, and designed as a community gathering. This year, it runs January 8th and 9th.
Like so much of the jazz story, all of this reflects an ongoing conversation—about who gets heard, who gets invited, and where the music belongs. And like so much history, it comes down to real estate: being in the right room, at the right time, with the right people.
That conversation is alive this week in New York—across APAP, Jazz Congress, globalFEST, Winter Jazzfest, and Unity. Alongside, of course, the everyday churn of extraordinary music being made, night after night, on stages all over the city.
