Jazz music’s sonorous chords and jaunty improvisations once dominated entertainment venues throughout the nation.  Now, several years into the twenty-first century, the glitzy legacies of musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Billie Holiday are regarded — to the consternation of contemporary jazz enthusiasts — as remnants of a bygone era.

That is why Wynton Marsalis, the Pulitzer prize-winning trumpeter and founder/artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center spent the last two decades planning for a lofty entertainment hall, where jazz artists and their fans can convene to celebrate the free-spirited quality of jazz music. The result: Frederick P. Rose Hall — a recently erected $128 million edifice that houses 3 concert and performance spaces, an education center, and a recording studio.  As the world’s preeminent hub of jazz music, Frederick P. Rose Hall will also advance scholarship on jazz and its historical significance in America.    

When asked how jazz musicians of the previous century would respond to the new hall, Mr. Marsalis answered in his characteristic emphatic tone: “They would probably start crying. They gave a lot and fought hard to earn recognition for jazz in our culture. We respect and honor them with this center.”      

Toyin