Jazz Articles about Irvin Mayfield

Traditional New Orleans Jazz, Conversations with the Men Who Make the Music

by Thomas W. Jacobsen
October 24, 2011

This article, adapted by the author, appears in Chapter 5 of Traditional New Orleans Jazz, Conversations with the Men Who Make the Music by Thomas W. Jacobsen (LSU Press, 2011). Irvin Mayfield: Boy Wonder Sometimes people live long enough to fulfill the promise of their youth, and sometimes they don't. Some individuals eventually achieve their youthful dreams of success, but many certainly do not. Such is life.The following conversation, recorded on March ...

Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: Strange Fruit

by Jack Bowers
December 22, 2005

If there is any justice, Irvin Mayfield's powerful cantata that lays bare the taboo of interracial love and the horrors of lynching in the Jim Crow South should assume an honored place among the celebrated masterpieces of early 21st Century music. That probably won't happen, as justice is almost as scarce today as it was then, but it should. Strange Fruit is a monumental work, as celebratory as it is somber, a deeply emotional experience whose recitation of unpleasant truths ...

Irvin Mayfield: Hombre of Hot Music and Vital Education

by R.J. DeLuke
August 30, 2004

For a young trumpet player, New Orleans native son Irvin Mayfield is a busy man, yet in a particularly interesting way. He performs in a variety of groups, which isn't out of the ordinary for a working musician these days. But he also serves--with great pleasure, mind you--as a cultural ambassador, not only for his city, but for jazz music.Mayfield, 27, believes in the art form he learned in the Big Easy, and he isn't afraid to put ...

Irvin Mayfield: Half Past Autumn Suite

by Steven Robinson
April 17, 2003

Trumpeter Irvin Mayfield's Half Past Autumn Suite was commissioned by the New Orleans Museum of Art as a tribute to Gordon Parks on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition of his work. The suite was intended as a tribute to Mr. Parks, who is not just a great photographer, but also a writer, filmmaker, poet, and - as shown on this album - an able pianist.

The catalogue entry for this album states that the “the inspiration ...

Irvin Mayfield with Gordon Parks: Half Past Autumn Suite

by C. Michael Bailey
February 18, 2003

The jazz suite has grown into an art form all its own. Ellington created the form in the same way Franz Josef Haydn created the string quartet. Both men did not so much create the form by stimulating its genesis as much as bringing it to its mature actualization.

Other jazz composers have contributed to this form, most recently (and successfully) Wynton Marsalis. For present consideration: trumpeter Irvin Mayfield's third contribution to the Basin Street Records library, ...

Irvin Mayfield: How Passion Falls

by Mike Perciaccante
June 7, 2002

How Passion Falls is Mayfield's second CD on Basin Street Records and it can hold its own with all the mainstream jazz that has been released in recent memory.

The album contains ten original compositions (one track is “hidden" at the end) and deals with love and romance (what else, with a title like How Passion Falls). One of the most interesting things about this album is the song sequence. It could be called a jazz-opera because the tracks are ...

Irvin Mayfield: How Passion Falls

by Mark Corroto
April 1, 2001

The Jeopardy answer is: “This young hip New Orleans trumpeter has jazz chops on loan from Louis Armstrong." Your response might be: “Who is Wynton Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Nicholas Payton, or Irvin Mayfield?” Maybe it’s something they put in the juleps, because there is no shortage of trumpet talent coming out of the Crescent City. Twenty-two year old Irvin Mayfield, born the same year Wynton Marsalis launched his neo post-bop revival, seizes the opportunity to eclipse his mentor and role ...