At Age 30, Has Jazz At Lincoln Center Become Fuddy-Duddy? Not If You Look At It The Right Way

“It has been busily pioneering new angles of engagement and outreach, even as it holds the line against broader artistic changes sweeping the jazz world. At a time when canon-busting is nearly the national consensus, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s founding artistic director, Wynton Marsalis, maintains that jazz is a classical music with a fixed roster of heroes, and a nonnegotiable rhythmic foundation.” Says Marsalis, “We are a music that is constantly asked to abandon its own identity to become another thing. Why? What’s wrong with our identity?”