JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER

Part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Frederick P. Rose Hall, is located at West 60th Street and Broadway, directly adjacent to Columbus Circle. Housed inside the Time Warner Center, JALC's Frederick P. Rose Hall consists of three main music performance venues: Rose Theater, with 1,233 seats; The Allen Room, with 483 seats (featuring a 50 by 90-foot window overlooking Central Park); and Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, with 140 seats.

I discovered the existence of these exciting spaces for music thanks to my “Wynton Marsalis & Eric Clapton Play The Blues – Live from Lincoln Center” CD that was featured on Melodies & Memories Saturday editions of The Strange & The Extraordinary of January 13 and February 18, 2012. Marsalis is the artistic director of the JALC orchestra, and I have to say that visiting the complex one day is an event to which I aspire.

Jazz at Lincoln Center provides a year-round schedule of performance, education and broadcast events for audiences of all ages; including concerts, national and international tours, residencies, weekly national radio and television programs, recordings, publications, an annual high school jazz band competition and festival, a band director academy, a jazz appreciation curriculum for children, music publishing, children’s concerts, lectures, adult education courses and student and educator workshops.

The hall also contains the Irene Diamond Education Center with rehearsal and recording rooms and the Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame. Visitors can celebrate the lives, artistry and music of the jazz greats so integral to the art form, from Louis Armstrong to Mary Lou Williams. If I were a NYC resident, I think I’d want to have a season pass!