With New Venue Sony Hall, Blue Note Entertainment Group Enters a New Era

With the Sony Hall announcement, Blue Note has upped the ante on its already-impressive dominance as a presenter. “Please don’t call it an empire,” says Steve Bensusan, speaking to Billboard from his command post at BNEG. “I prefer to refer to it as another piece of a collection. We’ve expanded a lot in the past five years, and hopefully we’re going to start up more new clubs this year.” And he added, please don’t call Sony Hall just a jazz space. “We’re looking at all kinds of different styles of music,” he says. “We aim to hit diverse demos.”

The booking emphasis will skew towards a younger generation, says BNEG's vp strategic marketing and business development Jordy Freed. “That’s an important note for people to be aware of,” he says. “Sure, there will probably be legacy sets of jazz musicians, but most of the shows will focus on all genres and be geared toward a younger audience.”

Freed also bristles at the notion of a "Blue Note empire," but embraces the mindset of the brand’s appeal as a universe of possibilities. “The Blue Note club is a destination for jazz fans throughout the world,” he says. “But its brand awareness can also leverage an opportunity to reach new audiences and new partnerships.”

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As an example, Freed cites the Blue Note's 2016 brand partnership with the Intel Corporation, which experimented with 360-degree video, 3D audio content and live-streaming music in virtual reality from the New York club. Blue Note worked with startup Rivet Music's mobile app in linking up with the then-new Intel Xeon processor E3v5 family, which powered the experience. The club provided the act -- Living Colour, which delivered their fusion of rock, funk and jazz -- and Intel did the livestreaming. “That was an eye-opener on the power of branded corporate partnerships,” Freed says. “Since then, we have become more aggressive with building these kinds of partnerships.”

Freed says that one of the most successful of these partnerships has been with the worldwide distilled beverages company Pernod Ricard, which was rebranding its Seagram’s Gin in Europe in 2016. Blue Note took over a hotel in Madrid, created a mini club and produced pop-up shows with different artists, which all sold out. “It was so successful that we have become long-term partners,” Freed says. “It’s all about what our brand brings to the market and their push to reach new audiences.”

Also in 2016, Blue Note worked with the Japanese national broadcasting company NHK to create high-resolution 8K video events to be broadcast in Japan, including a duo piano show featuring Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea.

As for the Sony-branded partnership with the Blue Note Media Group (the sponsorship arm of BNEG) for Sony Hall, Freed says that after initial conversations, the idea to integrate tech and entertainment developed. Key to the agreement is the space itself on West 46th St. in Manhattan, at the Paramount Hotel’s downstairs supper club Diamond Horseshoe. The Horseshoe opened in 1938, featuring vaudeville-style revues, and shuttered in 1951, laying dormant until 2013 when the venue was refurbished to host the off-Broadway immersive theater show Queen of the Night, which ran for two years from New Year’s Eve 2013 through New Year’s Eve 2015. Since that time, the ballroom had been rented out for special events, but was largely dark.

“The live music community doesn’t know this space,” says Bensusan, who notes that Sony Hall has a long-term lease, without going into detail. “We’re going to make a few cosmetic changes but keep the interior intact. Sony liked the space and the idea of having naming rights. Like other venues, we’re following the classic jazz club model -- good food, good drink, world-class music.”