Jazz at Lincoln Center

Jazz at Lincoln Center is one of the world’s leading jazz institutions, a presenter, teacher, and advocate for jazz. It’s the home of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (JLCO), and Dizzy’s Club supper club where you can enjoy great jazz nightly with some sweet gumbo and world-class views of Central Park.

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Latin Culture at Jazz at Lincoln Center

JANUARY

Jazz Showcases

The Unity Jazz Festival is a jazz showcase for booking agents from the APAP Association of Performing Arts Professionals convention which is in town. This season is headlined by Trinidadian soca fusion band Kes and Friends, and features many great African American and Latin artists. The first night is more world focused, the second is more Caribbean.

You may not know all the artists, but many are giants in their traditions. It’s special to see them all on one or two nights, united in jazz. Perhaps that’s the meaning of the Festival’s title. It’s an expression of the African American community’s unity with all members of the African Diaspora, which in the Americas includes the Indigenous world, and many other cultures you might not expect. Jazz has gone universal.

Thursday, January 8, 2026 showcases include Camila Cortina Trio (Argentine), Dom Salvador (Brazilian), Erena Terakubo Octet (Japanese), Kes and Friends (Trinidadian), Rajna Swaminathan (Indian), Miles Okazaki (Japanese), Luques Curtis (Puerto Rican), Akiko Tsuruga (Japanese), and more. It’s all at Jazz at Lincoln Center in Columbus Circle, Manhattan. The first show starts at 6:30pm with the last starting at 11:15pm. From $87. 🇦🇷 🇧🇷 🇮🇳 🇯🇵 🇵🇷 🇹🇹 🇺🇸

Friday, January 9, 2026 showcases include Etienne Charles & Creole Soul (Trinidadian), Andre White Quartet (Trinidadian Canadian), Eddie Palmieri Experience directed by Eddie’s last bass player Luques Curtis (Puerto Rican), Samir LanGus Trio (Moroccan), Gabriel Chakarji Trio (Venezuelan), Kes and Friends (Trinidadian), Tivon Pennicott (Jamaican American), and more. It’s all at Jazz at Lincoln Center in Columbus Circle, Manhattan. The first show starts at 6:30pm with the last starting at 11:15pm. From $87. 🇯🇲 🇲🇦 🇵🇷 🇹🇹 🇻🇪 🇺🇸

Soca is a Trinidadian blend of calypso with Indian rhythms. It’s the sound of Trinidadian Carnival, the Mother of Caribbean Carnival, and New York Carnival too, which follows Trinidadian tradition. Trinidad’s largest ethnic community is of Indian descent. They came as indentured servants after abolition. In Trinidad and other English-speaking countries in the Caribbean, such as Jamaica and Guyana, Indians became Latin (at least in my broader definition). East Africa also has important, but largely forgotten Indian influences because it was the western end of India’s Monsoon Trade. There has also been a lot of Indian migration to Mother Africa’s east coast.

DECEMBER

Big Band Holiday Jazz

Big Band Holidays with The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra is a New York holiday tradition. This season is directed by JLCO trombonist Chris Crenshaw, featuring vocalist Shenel Johns and Sarah Vaughn International Jazz Vocal Competition winner Kate Kortum. Swing on into the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center at Columbus Circle, Manhattan; from Wednesday-Sunday, December 17-21, 2025. From $52. 🇺🇸

FEATURED ARTISTS

Rubén Blades closes his historic 2014 concert with “Patría” (Motherland)

Rubén Blades is a Panamanian salsa legend from the FANIA days who played a historic concert in 2014 backed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis and featured percussionists Bobby Allende, Marc Quiñones, and Carlos Padron. Hearing Rubén flow between his hit “Pedro Navaja” and its inspiration “Mack the Knife” was unforgettable. Blades closed with “Patria” (Motherland). Wynton playing the trumpet melody at the end as the congas carry you away still haunts me. “Patria son tantas cosa bellas.” It’s an album now. I promoted that concert and was there.
Edmar Castaneda is an Indigenous Colombian jazz harp virtuoso whose fingers sound like angels. 🇨🇴
Paquito D’Rivera is a Cuban jazz and classical music sax and clarinet virtuoso who flows naturally between the two idioms. He has one of the happiest horns you’ll ever hear. 🇨🇺
Carlos Henriquez is a New York Puerto Rican who holds the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra bass chair. 🇵🇷
Elio Villafranca is a Cuban jazz pianist whose compositions tell stories of the African Diaspora. I remember his sheet music falling off the piano on stage. It seemed like the pages would never end. He just kept playing. Watching a dancer perform with Elio, I understood how cultures blend together. She seemed to be mimicking the crazy way she saw a Spanish lady dancing in the big house. It made her friends laugh and that’s how Spanish and African rhythm and movement mixed together into something wonderfully new. 🇨🇺

About

Jazz at Lincoln Center is a performing arts center and educational institution that grew out of a summer concert series in 1987. It became an official part of Lincoln Center in 1991, and opened in Time Warner Center in 2004.

The Rose Theater is a 1,233-seat concert hall that was the world’s first designed specifically for jazz.
The Appel Room is a 427-seat amphitheater with Central Park views.
Dizzy’s Club is a jazz supper club that swings nightly with Central Park views.

Holiday Programs include:

Big Band Holidays with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra
Carlos Henríquez Nonet usually closes the year from the day after Christmas to New Year’s Eve.

Enjoying a Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra concert is a bucket list item for your New York life. They make Time Warner Center swing. If you ever notice the Center’s twin towers swaying back and forth, it’s because the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra is in the house.

Wynton Marsalis of the legendary Marsalis jazz family is a co-founder and the current Managing and Artistic Director. He not just a trumpet virtuoso, he’s one of the most articulate advocates for jazz.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis is truly an all-star jazz big band. Its bassist Carlos Henriquez is a New York Puerto Rican who was mentored by Tito Puente and other salsa legends as a young artist. Marsalis chose Henriquez as his ensemble bassist right out of high school. Maybe Henriquez provides that “Spanish tinge” that Jelly Roll Morton so famously said was essential for jazz.

Herding New Yorkers can be a real trick, but the Jazz at Lincoln Center Customer Service Team has figured it out. They make you feel at home as soon as you walk in the door, and that is pure magic.

Iroko “Kíko” Keith ~ I learned clave, the 3-2 or 2-3 Afro-Cuban habanera rhythm from Carlos Henriquez at a Jazz at Lincoln Center concert. I didn’t grow up with it, but now live in clave, and my Afro-Indigenous Dominican Taína daughter has it too. At five years old, she blew me away by clapping in clave. I didn’t teach her, she just felt it, maybe because I play a lot of Cuban son clave and rumba clave at home. Even though a lot of jazz’s sweet syncopation comes from Haiti which is two days walk from where I live, most Dominicans don’t have clave. She got it from me naturally, and I got it from Carlos, who got it from his family, Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, and other Latin music legends. Thank you Carlos and Jazz at Lincoln Center. You changed my life, and maybe another one too. This reminds me of the old African American tradition of Each One, Teach One. We all have that responsibility to each other.