Results for "New Orleans"

Preservation Hall Jazz Band

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band derives its name from Preservation Hall, the venerable music venue located in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter, founded in 1961 by Allan and Sandra Jaffe. The band has traveled worldwide spreading their mission to nurture and perpetuate the art form of New Orleans Jazz. Whether performing at Carnegie Hall or Lincoln Center, for British Royalty or the King of Thailand, this music embodies a joyful, timeless spirit. Under the auspices of current director, Ben Jaffe, the son of founders Allan and Sandra, Preservation Hall continues with a deep reverence and consciousness of its greatest attributes in the modern day as a venue, band, and record label. The building that houses Preservation Hall has housed many businesses over the years including a tavern during the war of 1812, a photo studio and an art gallery

Nicholas Payton

Born: September 26, 1973

Since 1994 when Nicholas Payton made his recording debut as a leader with From This Moment, the trumpeter has been lauded as a significant, top-tier voice in jazz. Even though he started out as a “young lion of jazz,” heralded as one of the new-generation guardians of the hard bop flame, Payton consistently committed himself to discovering his voice outside of the strict confines of that rearview mirror approach to the music. While his jazz journey has taken him down many roads"from heritage artist to electric experimenter"the 34-year-old trumpeter arrives at a new plateau of jazz maturity with Into the Blue, his ninth album and his first for Nonesuch

Jelly Roll Morton

Born: October 20, 1890

The city of New Orleans has the distinction of being the ‘birthplace of jazz’ so its appropriate that in New Orleans in or around 1885 to 1890 would be born the self-proclaimed “inventor of jazz”. Ferdinand Joseph Lemott (Lamothe) and his story is one of mystery, legend, genius, with an incredulous outcome, and original musical score. Being considered a Creole in the Crescent City had its advantages in the fact that he was exposed to the fine arts and music as a child. He would undertake formal piano lessons with one Tony Jackson who was considered a wunderkind piano professor with exceptional musical ability, mirrored by the young student, who demonstrated an elevated level of talent, and the confidence to perform it. We pick up on his trail as he moved to Biloxi, Mississippi to stay with his godmother, and so begins life on the road

King Oliver

Born: December 19, 1881

If we were to take all the major trumpet players in jazz, line them up in chronological order, ask them who they listened to and were influenced by, then send them down the long dark chute of jazz history, they would run right smack dab into King Oliver. Joseph Oliver was rumored to have been born on a plantation in Abend, Louisiana in 1885. His first instrument was the trombone, which by 1904 he was playing in the Onward Brass Band. He would continue with several bands, and started also playing the cornet. Being that New Orleans was a trumpet playing town, he had to work hard and long on his chops, and spent a lot of time learning to read music, which he became very good at, even in spite of having lost one eye

Leroy Jones

Born: February 20, 1958

The legendary jazz trumpeter Leroy Jones is known to music lovers as the "keeper of the flame" for traditional New Orleans jazz and to critics as one of the top musicians ever produced by the Crescent City. "The mission of the Leroy Jones Quintet is to expose audiences everywhere to the authentic music of New Orleans, the music of Louis Armstrong, Buddy Bolden, Danny Barker and all the other greats who have helped create the rich gumbo that is the sound of New Orleans," he says, "while putting our own more modern stamp on it." Jones himself, a native of New Orleans, whose playing has been described as a blend of Louis Armstrong and bebop virtuoso Clifford Brown, has been a critical figure in the history of New Orleans music. A member of the New Orleans Jazz Hall of Fame, he was leader at the tender age of 12, of the seminal Fairview Band, a brass band whose alumni have included some of the best known musicians in New Orleans

Noah Howard

Born: April 6, 1943

One of free jazz's more enigmatic figures, alto saxophonist Noah Howard was documented so infrequently on record and spent so much time living in Europe that the course of his career and development as a musician remain difficult to trace, despite a late-'90s renewal of interest in his music. Howard was born in New Orleans in 1943 and began playing music in church as a child. He started out on trumpet (the instrument he played in the military during the early '60s) but subsequently switched to alto, and got in on the ground floor of the early free jazz movement. Most influenced by Albert Ayler, Howard made his debut as a leader for the groundbreaking ESP label, recording a pair of dates in 1966 (Noah Howard Quartet and At Judson Hall). Dissatisfied with the reception accorded his music and the avant-garde movement in general in America, Howard relocated to Europe, where he initially lived in France

Donald Harrison

Born: June 23, 1960

New Orleans born saxophonist Donald Harrison is a musician/composer who master musicians consider a master of every era of jazz, soul, funk, and a composer of orchestral classical music. He is also a genius, according to geniuses like Eddie Palmieri and Mike Clark. In the HBO drama Treme, Emmy winning director David Simon created two characters to portray how Harrison innovated new styles of music. Harrison has appeared as an actor/musician in 9 episodes of Treme, Oscar-winning director Johnathon Demme’s film Rachel Getting Married, Spike Lee’s When The Levee’s Broke documentary, and Marvel’s Luke Cage. This talented artist is the recognized Big Chief of Congo Square in Afro-New Orleans culture and was made a Chief in 2019 by Queen Diambi Kabatusuila in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa.

Fats Domino

Born: February 26, 1928

A genial and prolific musician, Fats Domino was the most commercially successful of a long line of New Orleans rhythm-and- blues pianists and vocal performers. Coming to prominence at the dawn of rock and roll in the middle 1950s, Domino is often named as one of that music's originators and classic figures. He was a gifted and entirely self-taught composer who parlayed his multiple talents into a long period of popularity with music fans of all races, and he stands perhaps as the most enthusiastic exponent of the Crescent City's great musical tradition. Fats Domino was born Antoine Domino on February 26, 1928, in New Orleans, one of nine children

Harry Connick, Jr.

Born: September 11, 1967

Harry Connick, Jr.'s career has been studded with awards and recognition, including several multi-platinum and gold albums, Grammy and Emmy awards, a starring role in a Tony-winning Broadway musical and much more. A true American icon, there are few artists of Harry's stature, and fewer still with such a comprehensive span of the entire realm of entertainment. Harry grew up in New Orleans, and it is here you will find the roots of his love for music and performing. His early talent was shaped by study with such luminaries as James Booker and Ellis Marsalis, and he was but five years old when he began performing

Evan Christopher

Born: August 31, 1969

Evan Christopher combines virtuosity, immaculate taste, and enthusiasm with a commitment to exploring the full range of possibilities in the New Orleans clarinet tradition. His highly personal brand of “contemporary, early jazz” strives to extend the legacies of early Creole clarinetists such as Sidney Bechet, Barney Bigard and Omer Simeon. Critics remarking on Christopher’s dynamic expressiveness have coined his style “close-encounter music” (NEW YORK TIMES) and have called his respect for the music traditions of New Orleans, “a triumph, joining the present seamlessly to a glorious past.” (THE OBSERVER, UK). His journey on Clarinet Road began in 1994, when he left his native California to join the New Orleans music community