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Wynton on hurricane Katrina’s anniversary
Wynton Marsalis will return to New Orleans to produce a television special marking the hurricane’s anniversary.
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Wynton and his production partner Lisa Marie Hoggs will team with producers John Cossette and Don Mischer to helm “New Orleans: Rebuilding the Soul of America One Year Later,” a live television special taking place at the New Orleans Morial Convention Center. -
Congo Square Rising Up
Wynton Marsalis and Jazz at Lincoln Center bring comfort and jazz to the city of New Orleans.
It’s been about nine months since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. Today, the area is slowly being rebuilt. Jazz at Lincoln Center Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis has led efforts to heal his native city but his journey there this past month was planned well before the unforeseen disaster. Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra (LCJO) performed a series of free events for people of all ages, including concerts, master classes, clinics, and workshops during a weeklong residency, April 17-23. The events were co-sponsored by the state of Louisiana and the French Quarter Festival in New Orleans.
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Jazz great laments politics of New Orleans revival
NEW ORLEANS - Wynton Marsalis is an impatient man, so for the jazz trumpeter who’s become a global ambassador for New Orleans culture, the politics of reconstruction in his battered city are frustrating. Through 7-1/2 months of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina, issues like bloated reconstruction contracts and loose minimum wage requirements have only added to the frustration, Marsalis said in an interview on Monday. Keep reading »
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Wynton and the new Louisiana Tourism Campaign
The Louisiana state rolled out a star-studded, $7 million advertising campaign Tuesday to lure tourists back to Louisiana and boost the sluggish economy along the hurricane-ravaged coast.
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Called “Fall in Love with Louisiana All Over Again,” the campaign consists of a commercial and half-dozen print ads. -
Shaken but Not Broken
The impact of Katrina really hit me when I couldn’t find the restaurant that serves my favorite po’ boy sandwiches. I was in the Uptown area, looking for Mandina’s. But everything around it was devastated. So I kept driving back and forth and looking—even though I also knew that if I did find it, there was no way in the world it would be open.
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Musician Wants to Bring Music Back to New Orleans
New Orleans is known around the world as a birthplace of jazz. Hurricane Katrina scattered many of the city’s musicians and artists across the country. Fewer than 300 of the city’s pre-Katrina population of over 2,000 musicians have returned. But the city, as part of its recovery effort, is trying to get more of them back.
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Revitalizing the culture of New Orleans is the goal of the Bring Back New Orleans Cultural committee. -
Transcript form Wynton’s interview for Fox News Sunday
The holiday spirit alive and well in New Orleans. It’s been almost four months since Hurricane Katrina of ravaged the Gulf Coast. Now residents and businesses are slowly returning to New Orleans.
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Higher Ground CD reviewed by Washington Post
Hitting Katrina From Two Directions
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There are nearly 10 benefit albums with Hurricane Katrina on their minds, and doubtless more are coming. Bring ‘em on. In theory, at least, when it comes to raising relief funds through music, everyone wins. -
Wynton wrote an introduction on a new book about Katrina
Hurricane Katrina: The Storm That Changed America is a collection of photographs and essays by the staff and editors of the respected news magazine, Time.
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The book is organized in a day-by-day chronology of the storm, from the time it swiped south Florida until its devastating landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi, and Time’s writers tell the story of the storm in their reports from the scene. -
Higher Ground benefit CD is in stores now
Today, Blue Note Records released Higher Ground, a CD that documents Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert, a landmark evening of musical offering that was mounted by Wynton on September 17, less than three weeks after Hurricane Katrina imparted its devastation upon the Gulf Coast.
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