New York City
New York Entrusts Its Entire Jazz Legacy To One Man With A Two-Drink Minimum
By BSN Staff, . BSN Network. Satire.
NEW YORK, NY, Immanuel Wilkins, the 26-year-old alto saxophonist whose playing has been described by critics as "the future of jazz" and by his Village Vanguard audiences as "hard to hear from the bar," will perform this week at the West 11th Street club that has hosted Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and a rotating cast of geniuses who did not have to explain to their Uber driver what jazz was.
Wilkins, who appeared last month at Jazz Middelheim in Antwerp, Belgium, in front of a seated, attentive European crowd that did not require a two-drink minimum to sit quietly, returns now to the room widely considered the spiritual headquarters of American jazz, which seats 123 people and has a noise ordinance.
Experts say the timing is significant. Jazz, as a cultural institution, has spent the past four decades being described as dying, dead, or "having a moment," depending on which magazine needed a September cover story. Wilkins is currently in the "having a moment" phase, which his publicist notes is distinct from the previous moments in that this one has a Bandcamp page.
"Immanuel is doing something genuinely important," said Marcus Reeves, a music journalist who has covered jazz for thirty years and who asked not to be quoted saying anything that could be used to argue jazz is fine. "He's taking the tradition, the Coltrane lineage, the post-bop vocabulary, and he's pulling it somewhere new. Something that hasn't been heard before. Something that will cost you $35 at the door plus whatever you drink, which at the Vanguard is a Stella Artois because they ran out of the good stuff."
Wilkins himself, in a recent interview, said he thinks about jazz "as a living thing, not a museum piece," a framing that will be tested Thursday night when a man in his sixties leans over to inform the couple next to him that the original recording of this standard was better.
The Village Vanguard, which has operated continuously since 1935 and which the National Trust for Historic Preservation describes as "a landmark of incalculable cultural value," charges $35 admission, has no standing room, and will not hold your table if you go to the bathroom during the set. The incalculable cultural value ends at the door.
City officials were unavailable for comment on whether one saxophonist constitutes an adequate jazz preservation strategy, though a spokesperson for the Department of Cultural Affairs confirmed that the city's official jazz policy is "supportive in spirit" and has been since 1987, when the spirit was all anyone could afford to offer.
Wilkins plays Thursday through Sunday. Reservations are recommended. The salmon is $28 and arrives after the first song.
The story we are making fun of: https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/immanuel-wilkins-is-upholding-nycs-jazz-history-hes-also-dreaming-up-its-future