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Wynton and JALC celebrate New Orleans

Jazz at Lincoln Center announced a full-scale celebration of New Orleans from the Big Easy to the Big Apple.
The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO) with Wynton Marsalis will perform free events for people of all ages, including concerts, master classes, clinics, and workshops during a weeklong residency in New Orleans from April 17-23.
The residency is in conjunction with the state of Louisiana and in partnership with the French Quarter Festival in New Orleans.

The LCJO in collaboration with Odadaa! will perform a world premiere composition called “Congo Square“ co-written by Wynton and Yacub Addy who leads Odadaa! The new work is dedicated to Wynton’s native New Orleans and following the New Orleans premiere will be performed on tour from Florida to New York.
This is the debut performance of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis in New Orleans.

As part of the events in New Orleans, a photography exhibit of work by photographer Frank Stewart will open on April 17 at Basin Street Station in New Orleans. In addition, Jazz at Lincoln Center will produce a New Orleans Festival throughout its home in New York, Frederick P. Rose Hall. There will be Crescent City Gospel concerts in The Allen Room featuring Wycliffe Gordon, Crescent City Swing in Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola featuring Wess “Warmdaddy” Anderson, and a Jazz in the Schools tour by the Juilliard Jazz Ensemble featuring the music of the Big Easy called, “New Orleans: Melting Pot of Sound.”
Many of these productions take place during Jazz at Lincoln Center’s celebration of Jazz Appreciation Month throughout April.

Date	City	Venue	Artist
April 17-20	New Orleans, LA	TBA	LCJO education, various artists
April 17	New Orleans	Basin Street Station	Frank Stewart Photography Exhibit Opens + Wynton Marsalis Press Conference
April 21	New Orleans, LA	TBA	LCJO Jazz for Young People(SM)
April 23	New Orleans, LA	Congo Square in Louis Armstrong Park	LCJO + Odadaa! — WORLD PREMIERE
April 24	West Palm Beach, FL	Kravis Center	LCJO + Odadaa! Congo Square
April 25	Miami, FL	Gusman Center for the Performing Arts	LCJO + Odadaa! Congo Square
April 27	Clearwater, FL	Ruth Eckerd Hall	LCJO + Odadaa! Congo Square
April 29	Chapel Hill, NC	Memorial Hall	LCJO + Odadaa! Congo Square
April 30	Norfolk, VA	Chrysler Hall	LCJO + Odadaa! Congo Square
May 2	Washington, D.C.	Kennedy Center Concert Hall	LCJO + Odadaa! Congo Square
May 2-7	New York, NY	Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola	Crescent City Swing – Wess “Warmdaddy” Anderson Quartet
May 4-6	New York, NY	Frederick P. Rose Hall, Rose Theater	LCJO + Odadaa! Congo Square
May 4-6	New York, NY	Frederick P. Rose Hall, The Allen Room	Wycliffe Gordon and guests in Crescent City Gospel

THE NEW ORLEANS RESIDENCY
“Congo Square,” a cross-cultural musical collaboration between Wynton Marsalis and the Ghanaian drum master Yacub Addy, will be an extended composition about 80 minutes in length, co-composed for joint performance by the JLCO and Mr. Addy’s nine-piece ensemble Odadaa! The piece is inspired by the public square in New Orleans where, from the mid-1700s to the late-1800s, Africans gathered on Sunday afternoons to perform African rhythms, songs and dances on a variety of African and European instruments.
Due largely to the fact that New Orleans was originally a French colony, Congo Square was the only place in America where slaves could regularly perform African music and dance. Elsewhere in the British colonies and later in the U.S., African drumming was regarded as a menacing form of communication that was banned and punishable by death. Historians agree that the unique exception of Congo Square is what made it possible for New Orleans to become the birthplace of jazz at the turn of the twentieth century.

Wynton serves as a Chair on Lieutenant Governor Landrieu’s National Advisory Board for Culture, Recreation and Tourism, a national advisory board to guide the Lieutenant Governor’s administration’s plans to rebuild Louisiana’s tourism and cultural economies. He has also part of the Bring Back New Orleans Commission, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin’s initiative to help rebuild New Orleans culturally, socially, economically, and uniquely for every citizen.

“With these performances we hope to bring some joy to the people who are working so hard to bring the city back. New Orleans is my home no matter where I go in the world and all of my music speaks to the essence of that culture,”

said Wynton.

Posted on March 21st, 2006 in Concerts | Tags: congo square, jazz at lincoln center, jazz at lincoln center orchestra, master class, new orleans, yacub addy and odadaa