Jack Kleinsinger, a lawyer by day who in his evening hours indulged his passion for music by creating and running Highlights in Jazz, one of New York’s longest-running concert series, for which he arranged and hosted more than 300 shows over a 50-year run, died on June 11 at his home in Manhattan. He was 88.
His cousin, Elizabeth Elliot, said the cause was complications of a fall.
Mr. Kleinsinger spent 30 years as a government lawyer, first for New York City and then, from 1970 to 1991, as an assistant attorney general for the State of New York.
But his real life began after he punched out every afternoon. Seven times a year, he presented Highlights in Jazz, a roaming concert series that featured some of the country’s best musicians playing alongside a host of promising young artists.
Beginning in 1973, at a time when interest in jazz was at its ebb and nightclubs were shutting down, Mr. Kleinsinger nonetheless drew packed crowds. His shows often sold out; any tickets he didn’t sell, he donated to performing-arts high schools around the city.
He could count on a core audience of about 350, many of whom took pride in attending virtually every one of his shows. He built on that base with a mailing list of 5,000, which he curated by hand.
He offered idiosyncratic lineups, combining musicians of different ages, genders, races, nationalities and levels of fame; a famous trumpet player like Dizzy Gillespie might play alongside an up-and-coming female guitarist from Germany.
“He wanted to make concerts he would enjoy, with people who would not normally play together,” said Danny Gottlieb, who as a young drummer played in a concert put on by Mr. Kleinsinger in 1976, and who remained a close friend.
He would always have a surprise guest. Sometimes, even he didn’t know who would show up — one night he was onstage, introducing a song, when he was startled to see Gerry Mulligan emerging from the audience, playing his saxophone as he walked down the aisle.
Mr. Kleinsinger never planned on leaving a legacy; he just wanted to hear good jazz.
By the early 1970s he was growing bored at work, and so almost every evening of the week he would head to jazz clubs in the West Village.
“I saved my sanity,” he said on “The Jake Feinberg Show,” an online series about jazz, in an interview posted shortly after his death. “It was cheap therapy.”
An extrovert who never forgot a face, he befriended many of the artists he met in the city’s clubs and concert halls, guys like the guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and the clarinetist Phil Bodner.
One night, he told Mr. Feinberg, Mr. Pizzarelli and Mr. Bodner sat him down and said, “You know, you’re comfortable with musicians and love the music, why don’t you take over a club or rent a hall? Put on concerts and get it out of your system.”
And that’s what he did. He booked two shows at the Theater de Lys in Greenwich Village (now the Lucille Lortel Theater), modeled on the promoter Norman Granz’s long-running Jazz at the Philharmonic series. Among the artists the first night were the saxophonist Zoot Sims, the trumpeter Joe Newman and Mr. Pizzarelli.
Those first shows were such a hit, and Mr. Kleinsinger had such fun organizing them, that he immediately planned more, renting venues on college campuses around Manhattan.
By 1975, The New York Times wrote, “Musicians were crawling over each other to be a part of the program.”
Mr. Kleinsinger proved a gifted M.C., able to keep the energy up and the audience focused even as he gave the musicians free rein to improvise.
No two concerts were the same, though Mr. Kleinsinger did host an annual show honoring a living jazz great. He also hosted the occasional special program — in 1976 he curated a children’s concert, based around “Tubby the Tuba,” a composition by his cousin George Kleinsinger.
And while his regular retinue of A-list musicians was certainly part of the concerts’ appeal, audiences also turned out for the pleasant surprise of seeing an unknown talent.
“His creative vision of presenting more than 300 jazz concerts in New York helped revitalize the New York jazz scene,” Mr. Gottlieb said, “and he helped so many young musicians by allowing them to perform on these concerts and interact with jazz greats.”
Jack Stuart Kleinsinger was born on Aug. 1, 1936, in the Bronx, to Frieda (Feldman) Kleinsinger, a teacher, and Harold Kleinsinger, who taught chemistry and physics at St. John’s University.
He studied political science at the University of Wisconsin and, after graduating in 1957, received his law degree from St. John’s in 1959. Following a stint with the Army National Guard, he joined the New York City government as a lawyer. He continued his concert series long after he retired from the law in 1991. His last concert was in 2023.
Mr. Kleinsinger was a meticulous accumulator, and he kept files on each of his concerts, along with recordings, first on cassette and then on CD.
Several years ago Mr. Gottlieb, who taught jazz at the University of North Florida, arranged for Mr. Kleinsinger’s collection to be archived and digitized, an immense undertaking that today offers an unmatched look at the recent history of the New York jazz scene.
Mr. Kleinsinger left no immediate survivors, nor did he leave any directions for his burial, other than his wish to be cremated.
A few days after his death, Mrs. Elliot, his cousin, arranged for him to be interred in a mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx, where many jazz greats are buried, including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Max Roach. His remains sit in a niche just a few rows away from the actress and singer Diahann Carroll.
“Somewhere, Jack is smiling,” she said. “I am sure of that.”
Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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