Listen to music by Brooklyn-based jazz artists at www.utne.com/Brooklyn.

For more than 50 years, Manhattan was an epicenter of jazz. The music especially thrived in areas where crime and abandoned buildings kept the cost of living low for artists like Charlie “Bird” Parker, who rented an apartment at 151 Avenue B.

On a recent rainy Friday night at a café in Park Slope, Brooklyn, as listeners packed in to hear new music by the bassist Todd Sickafoose (www.cryptogramophone.com), it was clear that the musical map of New York City is shifting. The band, mostly Brooklynites, comprised some of New York City’s most popular young players, including saxophonist John Ellis and violinist Jenny Scheinman. Against the sonic backdrop of a coffee grinder’s whir and before a mixed crowd of music fans and laptop-engrossed java drinkers, Sickafoose led the eight-piece group through a dreamy series of billowy tunes that alternately swung, grooved, and crooned. The vibe was relaxed, experimental, and bohemian.

 As luxury condos sprout up in the Alphabet City neighborhood Bird once called home, artists have been fleeing to find cheaper rents and more room for artistic expression.“None of us really can afford or even want to live in Manhattan,” says saxophonist Andrew D’Angelo, who has lived in Brooklyn for about 15 years.

D’Angelo recorded his latest album, Skadra Degis, for Skirl Records (www.skirlrecords.com), a Brooklyn-based, artist-run label focusing on the avant-garde music that is often referred to as “downtown jazz” because it once flourished at now-closed clubs like Tonic on the Lower East Side. Many former “downtowners” have made their home in Brooklyn, D’Angelo says, and “it’s no wonder that some of the performance opportunities have followed us.”

Jazz has existed in Brooklyn for decades, but this new crop of performance spaces, record labels, and jazz-oriented artist collectives is starting to give the borough the kind of reputation for jazz that SoHo and the Village once had. While cover charges at storied Manhattan clubs like the Blue Note and the Village Vanguard soar, Brooklyn venues like the Tea Lounge, the French-themed Barbès, and Williamsburg’s Rose Live Music offer some of the city’s most innovative new music for half the price or less, moving the local music community south and east.

The changing nature of the music business is another factor driving the nucleus of new jazz away from Manhattan. “Most of us believe that there is a specific lifestyle attitude related to jazz and improvisational music and linked to Brooklyn,” says bassist Alexis Cuadrado, a charter member of the Brooklyn Jazz Underground (www.brooklynjazz.org), a collective of 10 local independent bandleaders. Members work together to ease the burdens of booking tours, marketing, and recording their work.