Jazz has gone global. Just like your job, your mortgage and the cost of gas at the pump, the music now responds to global forces.

As a jazz critic, I now need to pay attention to the talent coming out of New Zealand, Indonesia, Lebanon, Chile, and other places previously outside my purview. Almost every major city on the planet now has homegrown talent worthy of a worldwide audience.

Great jazz artists often don’t come from Manhattan, but they struggle to build a reputation and gain career traction if they don’t come to Manhattan.

Yet one thing hasn’t changed on the jazz scene: New York still sits on top of the heap. Great jazz artists often don’t come from Manhattan, but they struggle to build a reputation and gain career traction if they don’t come to Manhattan.

The recent sensation over Indonesian jazz prodigy Joey Alexander is a case in point. At age 8, this formidable youngster had already caught the attention of jazz icon Herbie Hancock, and at 9, he beat out 43 musicians (of all ages) from 17 countries to win a prestigious European competition. A year later, Alexander’s parents moved to New York, realizing that even the greatest prodigy in jazz needed what only the city could offer.

How did it work out? At age 11, Alexander received a glowing write-up in The New York Times, a record contract and headline billing at the Newport Jazz Festival. He became the first Indonesian musician with a record on the Billboard 200 chart in the United States. His debut album earned two Grammy nominations, and Alexander performed on the TV broadcast, reaching an audience of 25 million people—and earning a standing ovation. None of that would have happened if the Alexander family were still living in Bali.

Saxophonist Melissa Aldana, recent winner of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Competition, followed a similar path…

Read the entire piece here at The Observer

(This story was adapted from the Summer 2016 Issue of City Journal)

This article  is republished with permission from our friends at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.