Taking In the Winter Jazzfest (Or Trying to Anyhow) The Winter Jazzfest heaved into being in 2005, subsuming all three floors of what was then the Knitting Factory in TriBeCa. Over the last eight years the festival has expanded and relocated - its geographical center, since 2009, has been the Bleecker Street bar district, in and around Le Poisson Rouge - but its core function hasn't changed at all. My colleague Ben Ratliff, whose review of the festival will appear next week, recently pegged it as "a cheaply priced cramming rite for New Yorkers interested in new improvised music." That's absolutely true. But Winter Jazzfest is also timed to coincide with the annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters conference, which brings concert and festival bookers to New York in search of smart new bands, special projects, promising collaborations. The musicians crowd these stages in part because of the chance to make a fateful impression. For those in the crowd who aren't holding purse strings (or reporter's notebooks), the Winter Jazzfest experience can suggest a smorgasbord of discovery, or an endurance challenge, or a salmon's spawning run. Two years ago, on opening night, I found myself in a line outside Le Poisson Rouge that ran down the block, wrapping around the corner and down Thompson Street. It was cold. A couple in line next to me said it was their first time attending, and they didn't know a single one of the artists; they just lived in the neighborhood and had come out on a lark. I told them to hang in there. I hope they did. This year's festival, on Friday and Saturday nights, has six rooms running simultaneously, including two new participating performance spaces: Culture Project Theater, at 45 Bleecker Street, and Bowery Electric, at 327 Bowery. It's all too much for anyone to absorb completely, which is partly the point. Would it be a festival otherwise? Some folks stake out a spot and wait through the set changes; others try the roving approach. I'll probably try some combination of the two, without getting fixated on my initial targets. I will surely miss performances I've been looking forward to, and stumble across others I hadn't expected. In any case, I'll be sending in brief dispatches as the festival unfolds, in this space and on my Twitter feed (@natechinen). Stay tuned.