Since pianist Marcus Roberts first made a name for himself in
the 80s, he’s established his own voice by distilling the compositions,
style, and technique of great jazz piano masters. His recent record New Orleans Meets Harlem is a great example of his gift for alchemy. With his trio – comprised of drummer Jason Marsalis and bassist Rodney Jordan
– Roberts fleshes out the intricacies of tunes by Jelly Roll Morton
with a modern jazz twist. For this concert, the expansion to an octet
will ignite Roberts’ imagination to create sounds and colors that Morton
could only hear in his head. Featuring trumpeter Alphonso Horne, trombonist Ron Westray, saxophonists Stephen Riley and Ricardo Pascal, and clarinetist Joe Goldberg.
New Orleans Celebration: New Orleans Piano Kings
presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center
2011-12 Season
Master drummer Herlin Riley invites us all to a dream show for
any musician from New Orleans. Here he honors the great Crescent City
pianists of the past by recruiting great New Orleans pianists of the
present. His choices are the best of three generations of modern piano
players, including the dean of Louisiana pianists Ellis Marsalis, veteran Henry Butler, and young star Jonathan Batiste They are joined by New Orleans native Reginald Veal on bass.
Free Pre-Concert Activities
Free pre-concert discussion with JALC’s Ken Druker and pianist Terry Waldo, nightly at 7pm.
Free pre-concert celebration including live music by the Red Hook Ramblers, a gumbo cook-off, album art displays, and more, nightly at 6:30pm.
Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton October 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941
Jelly Roll Morton is considered Jazz’s first great composer and by at least himself, the inventor of jazz. Regardless, his contribution to the form cannot be denied. Starting out in New Orleans, reportedly playing the local bordellos as a teenager, Morton soon hit the road landing in Los Angeles, Chicago and finally New York where his reputation as a braggart kept him from landing the sidemen he wanted, adversely effecting his career. He did make some outstanding recordings though, but he never was able to get the acclaim he deserved until after his death, again, likely due to his reputation. Jelly Roll Morton died as a result of ongoing asthma troubles at just 50. His place in American music was finally recognized in the coming years when New Orleans jazz went through a revival.
The Radiators celebrated the anniversary with the release of Wild & Free, two CDs of mostly live material that they call “Fishhead Music.” Wild & Free dates back as far as their formative year of 1978 and also includes new songs written for the release. Bassist Reggie Scanlan spoke with me about the group, the new release, Fishhead Music, Hurricane Katrina, and the inimitable world of New Orleans music. Here’s part 1 of the interview:
I went to Jazz Festival last year and came back wanting to immerse myself in the music of southern Louisiana. The diversity and depth are such that it’s impossible to say that there is a such thing as one Louisiana Sound or a NOLA Sound.
It’s all delineated. People want to put in a bucket and it’s not like that.
Last Saturday, Antoinette K-Doe was laid to rest, dearly departed, dearly beloved.
Outside St. James Methodist Church on Ursulines, the choking smell of the horse-drawn hearse driver's cigar wafted over the hundreds of faces, New Orleans faces, black and white faces, young and old faces, crazy good faces all.
The old folks all looked like museum prints waiting to be shot in black-and-white and silver-framed, their faces etched with lines like rivers of joy, rivers of sorrow, rivers of life. The younger folks were dressed weird and their faces beamed in anticipation of a classic New Orleans street throwdown.
One day, they will have lines, too, to tell their stories.
A car parked under the overpass bore the bumper sticker that says, "New Orleans: We Put the Fun in Funeral."
If you approached Tuesday's shooting location from Treme Street, it appeared that the scene involved smoky special effects - white billows floated down the street away from the lights, camera, action.
Upon closer inspection, though, the smoke meant that it was just another workday for Kermit Ruffins.
The ebullient trumpeter was acting in a scene for the pilot episode of "Treme," a prospective series for HBO now shooting around town, and he had wheeled his trademark barbecue grill to the set.
As the filming work went on in a pink home at mid-block, cast and crew fed from Ruffins' giant black cooker, hitched to the back of his giant black pick-up truck.
The impromptu street barbecue - an expected treat for attendees at a typ ical Ruffins music gig - was a surprise start-of-shooting bonus for "Treme," which, if picked up by HBO, will air next year and tell the post-K recovery story through the eyes of local musicians and cooks.
Keep-N-It Real Social Aid and Pleasure Club featuring The Hot 8 Brass Band
brought the purple heavenly haze to downtown New Orleans this past Sunday. And true to their name, their second line became the reality and that trainwreck on Poydras and Perdido, the illusion - at least for the four hours they paraded.
What tunes make your favorite celebrity get up and dance? Win their iPod to find out! Music rising, is raising money to help rebuild the New Orleans music scene by auctioning off celebrity iPods.
New iPod auctions will launch each week. check outwww.tonic.com/musicrising to see who's coming up, and then bid away.
Two years ago, trombonist Glen David Andrews could scarcely look up as he described his months "in exile" in Houston and the Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer he shared with relatives after Hurricane Katrina ravaged his hometown.
"I feel ground down," he said then. But at last year's New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, he bounded from the stage, gazed up and gleefully announced, "It's my time."
It may well be. Andrews' renewal is evident on his new album, "Walking Through Heaven's Gate" (Threadhead Records), which was released February 24. The songs on the collection, mostly hymns, reveal the same fire Andrews brings to street parades and bandstands throughout New Orleans, and they open a window into an important piece of the history that defines Andrews and his close clan of powerhouse musicians -- the church roots of their music.
The sun had burnt the morning fog from Jackson Square revealing glorious blue skies this morning, but there was no burning news reveled at the French Quarter Festival press conference.
With a few tweaks, it will be business as usual at the 26th annual event that takes place April 17 through 19. Not necessarily a bad thing, since the festival, which began in 1984 as a way to invigorate the Vieux Carre, is said to have drawn 435,000 visitors to New Orleans oldest neighborhood last year.
Festival executive director Marci Schramm thanked Walter "Wolfman" Washington for providing the morning's musical accompaniment -- a bluesy version of "Caravan." She pointed out that it was tad early for most musicians. Washington quietly concurred.
The newest Neighborhood Story Project book has been two years in the making, and is staking its claim as the first time a Mardi Gras Indians have collaborated on a book about their community. Building off the success of the best-selling Coming Out the Door for the Ninth Ward, NSP co-director Rachel Breunlin has worked with Ronald W. Lewis to tell the story of his museum, the House of Dance & Feathers.
The book, The House of Dance & Feathers: A Museum by Ronald W. Lewis, is a full color tour of the museum and the history and meaning of New Orleans African American street cultures, from Mardi Gras Indians, to Second Lines, to Bone Gangs. It was made possible through the support of the University of New Orleans, and a Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities grant.
Jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton ... as much a composer as an improviser. Photograph: Corbis
Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe, better known as Jelly Roll Morton, may have been a jazz legend (such a legend to himself, in fact, that he even claimed to have invented jazz) but he also kept his career options open. Born in 1890 in New Orleans to a Creole family and raised on ragtime, guitar, and classical piano, Morton was a professional entertainer by his early teens, but he also turned his hand to pool sharking, gambling, boxing promotion, tailoring, and occasional pimping in the city's Storyville red-light district.
Professor Longhair's "Tipitina" is a New Orleans funk staple and a template for the New Orleans piano style.
KPLU,February 18, 2009 - It's Mardi Gras week in New Orleans, so it's as good a time as any to join in the celebration with a brief but broad overview of some of the Crescent City's many extraordinary pianists.
One of the beauties of New Orleans piano music is that once you hear it, you'll know it whenever you encounter it again, regardless of context. Whether it's played as jazz or blues or funk, the cultural gumbo that makes up this piano style is unique to New Orleans — and, if a style can be said to have a personality, New Orleans piano has personality to burn.
There's only room for five examples in this list, but if you like what you hear, many more New Orleans pianists merit further exploration, including Tuts Washington, James Booker, Fats Domino, Cousin Joe, Jon Cleary, Ellis Marsalis, David Torkanowsky and — when he's in the mood to really throw down and play — Harry Connick Jr., to name just a few. So start with these five and spread out. You'll most assuredly "pass a good time," as they say down Acadiana way.
Celebrate Mardi Gras With New Orleans Piano
Jelly Roll Morton
Album: Last Sessions: The Complete General Recordings
Song: Crave
Jelly Roll Morton was one of the most important figures in early New Orleans jazz, not to mention one of the most colorful. Never one to eschew the spotlight, he often made the claim that he "invented" jazz. Although that's most probably untrue, there's no denying his impact on the creation and development of this music. He was a songwriter, a bandleader and a monstrously gifted pianist. What we have here is a 1939 solo piano recording of "The Crave," a song he'd written approximately 20 years earlier. It features what Morton called "the Spanish tinge," which basically refers to the touches of habanera rhythms that were present in many of his songs and reflect his Creole heritage. "The Crave" is exuberant, exhilarating, funky and just a little bit eerie -- sort of like New Orleans itself.
Professor Longhair
Album: New Orleans Piano
Song: Tipitina [*]
Henry Roeland Byrd, known to the world as Professor Longhair (and to his friends as 'Fess), added many ingredients to pianistic New Orleans music with his blend of blues, calypso, mambo, rumba and rock 'n' roll. "Tipitina" was created in a recording studio one day in 1953 when music producer Jerry Wexler asked Longhair to do an eight-bar blues cut in the style of an existing song called "Tee Nah Nah." He quickly put together an arrangement, appropriated a few verses of lyrics that were common to a number of blues songs, and created a chorus that was basically nonsense. Thanks to Longhair's unique genius, the song went on to become a New Orleans funk staple and the template for New Orleans piano style from then on.
Dr. John
Album: Dr. John's Gumbo
Song: Junko Partner
Thanks in no small part to his 1973 hit record Right Place, Wrong Time, Dr. John (born Malcolm John Rebennack) is probably the most well-known New Orleans pianist in the world. He's also one of the best. His early albums in the late 1960s and early '70s fused psychedelic influences with New Orleans rhythms, which gained him a following with the hippie generation. In 1972, however, he dropped the psychedelia and made an album that was pure, unadulterated New Orleans -- called Gumbo. This version of "Junko Partner" is from that release. As with many blues songs, its provenance is murky, but it's been a New Orleans standard for decades. Although the saxophone is dominant in the instrumental passages, listen to those sections closely and you'll hear Dr. John soloing like crazy beneath the saxophonist, even as he accompanies him.
Henry Butler
Album: Homeland
Song: The Game Band Strut
It's not uncommon to hear of musicians who begin their recording careers in R&B or blues and then progress to jazz. Henry Butler did it the other way around. His debut albums in the early '80s were jazz-piano trio recordings featuring top-flight accompanists such as Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, Ron Carter and Jack DeJohnette. Soon, however, his roots began to show, and he was drawn back to the music of his native city. So here's a man who can play classical pieces and intricate hard bop, and also lay down some of the fattest New Orleans funk you'll ever hear. The Game Band Strut is an example of the latter. Along with Butler on piano and organ, you'll hear great work from Vasti Jackson (guitar), Nick Daniels III (bass) and Raymond Weber (drums galore).
Allen Toussaint
Album: Our New Orleans
Song: Tipitina and Me
It's fairly safe to say that Allen Toussaint has done more to popularize the sound of New Orleans music than any other musician on this list. Yes, Jelly Roll Morton supplied the basic ingredients. Yes, Professor Longhair and Tuts Washington defined what would be the basic sound of modern New Orleans piano. But as a songwriter and producer, Toussaint was the man who took that sound, fused it with a pop sensibility and, beginning in the early 1960s, started producing records that would spread New Orleans music all over the map. With artists including Art and Aaron Neville, Lee Dorsey, Irma Thomas and Ernie K-Doe -- and songs such as "Ruler Of My Heart," "Working in a Coalmine" and "Fortune Teller" -- Toussaint made immortal R&B records and played the piano on many of them. With "Tipitina and Me," Toussaint brings our list full-circle. He takes Professor Longhair's classic song and plays in an almost classical style, while also summoning the spirit of Jelly Roll Morton and some of the zeitgeist of post-Katrina New Orleans. Then, at the end, after he's hit what seems to be the final chord, he elegantly, and somewhat wistfully, adds the opening notes of Longhair's song "Going to the Mardi Gras" as if to say, "No matter what kind of blow New Orleans is dealt, its spirit will never die.
