The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, now in its 55th year, increasingly looks like a major rock and pop festival, with a series of niche festivals running alongside the headline acts.
The conundrum with the ongoing moniker of Jazz Fest, as it is popularly known, is that to sustain a profitable festival, the vast majority of attendees are attracted to the marquee acts. While festival organisers are rightly proud that about 80% of the extraordinary array of musical talent spread over 14 stages and eight days is local to New Orleans or Louisiana, it is also likely that about 80% of the audience attend for the 20% of mainstream artists with at best tangential links to New Orleans musical heritage.
For the jazz devotee, however, this doesn’t make the festival any less appealing. Two stages are dedicated to jazz and traditional jazz, with around six acts on each stage on each of the eight days of the festival. That’s something like 96 jazz gigs, with another 570+ gigs on the other 12 stages – many of which would comfortably fit into the looser category of jazz-adjacent.
With nearly half a million people paying between $US 120 and 170 for single day tickets, the festival boosts the local economy, fills clubs and venues and generates around $US 2 million in annual grant funding for a range of educational and cultural programmes supporting schools and cultural torchbearers for the music and traditions of the city.
When heaving crowds head to the outdoor stages for headline acts like the Eagles, Stevie Nicks and Rod Stewart, the smaller niche tents for jazz, trad jazz, blues, gospel, zydeco and Cajun attract self-selecting, informed and appreciative audiences. It’s a trade-off that mostly works. And who knows? Just maybe there is a jazz fan who also likes the Eagles?
This year’s highlights included jazz headliners Herbie Hancock and Dianne Reeves, fresh off their International Jazz Day performances, with Monty Alexander, Hiromi, Terence Blanchard and Rhiannon Giddens lighting up the stage in the first weekend. Off-festival, in the evenings and mid-week break between the four-day weekends, there is a staggering number of concerts and performances in the many clubs and theatres throughout the city, which has also become of one of the top gastronomic destinations in the USA. New Orleans is a city that finds a way to meet just about any visitor’s interest.
By all reports, the Meters revival concerts at the Filmore and Saenger Theatres were star-studded highlights celebrating the first shows of these funk pioneers since 2019. Trombone Shorty, a next-generation funkateer, hosted a “Shorty Turns 40” birthday party at the Saenger Theatre and his annul Trombone Shorty Foundation fund-raiser at Tipitinas on the Monday afternoon and evening following the first weekend of the festival. The streets outside the famous uptown club, now owned by local funk band Galactic, were taken over by students from the Foundation, with a Battle of the Bands facing off two high-school marching bands. Roger Lewis, baritone sax with the Dirty Dozen band, was inducted into the Tipitina’s walk of fame before the action moved inside to the music room. Cuban funk band Cimafunk got the party moving before Trombone Shorty took to the stage with his powerhouse trombone attack. Local stars Big Freedia, Tank Ball and Joseph Jelly joined the band, while the band kept improvising past midnight to allow Jon Batiste to take the stage with his school-friend after a dash across town following a short-notice gig at Snug Harbour, the premier jazz club in the Frenchmen Street precinct adjacent to the French Quarter.
Glen David Andrews, Trombone Shorty’s cousin, is arguably the most exciting live performer in this city of extroverts. He hosts a small night-concert series at a new jazz club, the Three Maries, in the French Quarter Omni hotel. Andrews can whip a packed blues tent into a second-lining frenzy, but this venue is all muted lights and cocktail lounges, with a door limit of about 80. He held the small crowd transfixed with about 10 minutes of whistling, referencing Professor Longhair’s renowned Go To The Mardi Gras. He traded trombone licks from one end of the room to the other with his cousin Peanut, then built a street-carnival atmosphere while laying bare the raw emotions of his fall from grace and subsequent redemption.
Back at the festival grounds, Jamaican pianist Monty Alexander, just one month shy of 82, proudly wore the medallion of the Order of Jamaica, the nation being showcased at this year’s festival. His link to New Orleans was originally inspired by meeting Louis Armstrong at a concert in Jamaica when he was 12. Already a prodigious talent, he was attracted to the free-flowing improvisation of what he calls “the music that is a gift to the world”. He was playing ska and listening to Louis Jordan, preferring to “play notes that have a life” rather than learning to read music. Oscar Peterson and Duke Ellington supported him coming to the USA as a teenager, and at the age of 18, Frank Sinatra attended a Lenny Bruce gig in Las Vegas at which Alexander was also playing. Sinatra told him he was “swinging”, after which he joined Sinatra’s band in the legendary Jilly’s Saloon, a gangster and celebrity hangout in New York City, from 1963-1969.
He sees himself as bringing musical forms together, connecting the drum and bass of his Jamaican youth with the American jazz canon of Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington, Les McCann and Ahmad Jamal. In concert, he has a penchant for playing “in the bucket”, his preferred description for the musical connection between Jamaica and New Orleans, which he describes as the northernmost city in the Caribbean. He effortlessly and evocatively blended melodies and rhythm with strong and precise fingering. He was backed by the driving drums of local drummer, Herlin Riley, playing what appeared like a vertical drum kit. This concert was a powerful demonstration of the cross-over between modern jazz, one-drop reggae and the soulful New Orleans funk groove of Luther Kent.
As part of the ongoing centennial celebrations of John Coltrane and Miles Davis, both born in 1926, Nicholas Payton and the Richmond-based quintet Butcher Brown presented their collaboration, A Supreme Blue, which merged and reinterpreted the seminal Kind Of Blue and A Love Supreme albums. Payton balanced deference with the ethereal, referencing Davis but maintaining his own soulful tone. Marcus Tenney, on tenor saxophone, was perhaps less elegant than Payton, with a powerful, sometimes gritty reinterpretation of Coltrane.
Hiromi’s Sonicwonder performance was a refined and delightful performance with the quartet she first put together to record the Sonicwonderland album in 2023. Now much more familiar with the individual talents of her band, she explained on the interview stage prior to the gig that she now composes to highlight the individual strengths of each musician. She likened the process to “writing music to an imaginary film … it’s how I see my music”.
She told us she is excited for every gig she performs, and it showed. This was a joyous performance with a relentless forward motion built on the dynamics of bass and drums. It was an expansive, almost orchestral soundscape, with intricately layered melody, harmony and rhythm. The trumpet of Adam O’Farrill added dynamic range and tonal sensitivity. He had a crisp Latin sound that conjured Arturo Sandeval. French bass player Hadrien Feraud was very reminiscent of Stanley Clarke’s funk groove, while the drums of Gene Coy combined with piano to create what sounded a bit like Phillip Glass on speed before a segue into a carnival-style number with Hiromi’s trademark intricate right-hand rolling into a New Orleans style boogie. With typical playfulness and invention, she wove in When The Saints Go Marching In. It was a memorable performance: nuanced, balanced and borderline ecstatic.
The jazz tent closed for the weekend with the Headhunters followed by Ron Carter. Bill Summers showcased his extraordinary percussive range, including a memorable rendition of the introduction to Watermelon Man on a part-filled beer bottle, while Ron Carter demonstrated the refinement and style that has sustained his reputation as one of the legends of modern jazz.
Over in the blues tent, Rhiannon Giddens continued to revive and celebrate the African-American folk canon in a performance that combined ancestral African banjo with fiddle, accordion and guitars. It sounded a bit like a mash-up between cajun and Creole dance tunes with traditional Irish music. Her vocals were sublime – she had the storytelling cadence of one of the masters of South African song, Vusi Mahlasela. Giddens told us that “now is a good time for hope”, and that her fretless banjo playing makes her think about ancestral healing: ”I’ve got my soul in my hand …. music has the power of healing.”
The first weekend was also about Jon Batiste. The Batiste family is of comparable musical standing in the city to the Neville, Marsalis and Andrews families. Jon Batiste is now probably the most popular musical artist out of New Orleans since Fats Domino. He was the bandleader and musical director on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2022 and since 2022 has won multiple Grammys and other awards. His headline concert on the first Friday began with the Blind Boys of Alabama joining him for Amazing Grace. He then romped though multiple styles and collaborations with local luminaries.
Two days later Batiste headlined the blues stage for a musical performance that heralded a new creative endeavour, more in the form of a musical or emergent Broadway production than a standard concert. With a stage set designed to look like a swamp camp, Batiste was dressed in blue overalls, wearing a white woolly wig and beard. Nobody had seen anything like it, and most people didn’t recognise the grey-haired man on stage. “It’s me, Jon Batiste, in costume,” he told the audience. “This has been 10 years in the making and this is the first time being performed – a dystopian, swamp, sci-fi, drama musical.” It was his Old Man and the Swamp moment: a parable for contemporary crisis. The swamp camp is metaphor for lost community and family values in the face of impending environmental disaster. The swamp is also fertile ground for musical exploration. Batiste mines swamp blues and church music before a change of costume segues into a Chuck Berry rock and roll motif. It’s a performance that is raw and unresolved, but points to a possible new direction in musical and cultural performance and advocacy.
Probably coincidentally, David Byrne performed at the same time on one of the main outdoor stages. Batiste may well be harnessing the theatrical New York affectations of the north-east to further enrich the American understanding of the Louisiana south. Time will tell if he can pull this off.
The second weekend began with two days of torrential rain and thunderstorms that truncated the programme and closed the festival early. While I missed one of the rescheduled gigs, I did catch a live broadcast of a Terence Blanchard outing on the local community radio station WWOZ. WWOZ is a beneficiary of Jazz Fest profits and is described by Cyril Neville, the surviving performer from the seminal Neville Brothers, as being unique to New Orleans in the same way that the mouth of the Mississippi River is unique to the USA. Blanchard is fast becoming the standout trumpet player in this musical city devoted to the instrument. This Miles Davis and John Coltrane centennial concert with Ravi Coltrane (John and Alice’s son) on saxophone was a profoundly moving homage to the legacy of the 1955-1961 era – a reimagining and reinterpretation by two contemporary masters of their craft.
After the two-day deluge, the weather broke and the last two days were hosted in the best conditions I can recall in over 30 years. In the jazz tent, the Cuban connection got a work-out from vibrant percussionist Alexey Marti and pianist Victor Campbell, who was featured in the Oscar winning film, Sinners. The assembled big band traversed Brazil and Cuba with a compelling Latin dance groove, Marti and Campbell both charismatic performers. Campbell is tall and lean with extraordinarily long and dexterous fingers, which helped him pull off his party trick of playing boogie piano behind his back.
Dianne Reeves told an upbeat and responsive crowd “I prayed so hard it wouldn’t rain today” before owning the stage. Her vocals were rich and strong. Her mastery of scat is second to none. Backed by a very classy four-piece band, she was measured and powerful. It was a mature performance.
Reeves is a tough act to follow, but Delfeayo Marsalis and his Uptown Jazz Orchestra were up for the challenge. In past years, I have found Delfeayo quietly competent, if a little uninspiring. But this year he came to party. He kicked the show off with I Feel Like Funking it Up. This was a very big band with a very big sound. Delfeayo had assembled some of the best musicians in New Orleans with a horn section featuring four trombones (including his own), five saxophones and two sousaphones. Alonzo Bowens demonstrated that Roger Lewis (Dirty Dozen Brass Band) and Dan Ostreicher (Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue) may not be the only world class baritone players in this city. The orchestra played a rousing version of the Soul Rebels’ Let Your Mind Be Free before the jive groove of Abdullah Inbrahim’s Mandela paid homage to a president that Marsalis explained “knew his role was to govern for all the people”. Papa Was A Rolling Stone stamped this set as nothing short of thrilling – probably the best big band performance I can recall on the jazz stage in decades.
I had expected this kind of energy from Trumpet Mafia, a large aggregation of leading trumpet players from this city of the trumpet, but unlike past years, their music didn’t always gel – I guess it can sometimes be an impossible task to corral the collective talent of so many musicians. Amid the unresolved chaos, there were flashes of collective brilliance. And Keyon Harold – who played the music in the 2015 Miles Ahead biopic, was always on point when playing tribute to the Miles Davis centennial.
Dorreen Ketchens flew the flag for clarinet in the traditional jazz tent, following consistently strong performances over the eight days from the likes of Tuba Skinny (this year without their charismatic singer, Erika Lewis), Greg Stafford, Paulin Brothers and Treme Brass Band. Leroy Jones always plays a mean trumpet, but this set sounds more like a tourist-friendly catalogue of local standards than the innovation and technique he is capable of producing as one of the city’s most gifted musicians.
The festival closed with Trombone Shorty, Tedeschi Trucks and Earth Wind & Fire on the three main outdoor stages. Mavis Staples was in the blues tent, Kermit Ruffins paid tribute to Louis Armstrong in the trad jazz tent and Herbie Hancock was on the jazz stage. It was a Sophie’s choice of music greats.
Herbie Hancock was nothing short of sublime. He kicked the set off with Watermelon Man, paid tribute to his best friend Wayne Shorter on Footprints and allowed room for each of his band to excel. Lionel Loueke played guitar as if it were a keyboard; Terence Blanchard underlined, once again, just how powerful and refined he is on trumpet; James Genus, who, like Blanchard, is a former student of Ellis Marsalis, defined the pocket; and Jaylen Petinaud was a precocious talent on drums who can be forgiven his overplaying at the ripe old age of 27. Hancock, now 86, may have stepped back from the leap he made just a few years back with the keytar slung over his shoulder, but he still has the energy to bounce up and down as he trades licks with Loueke and Genus.
A short distance away, Mavis Staples was selling a hard-line story – there were no veiled references for this matriarch of gospel and blues. “We’ve got work to do. We don’t need no dictator king telling women what to do with their bodies. We take care of our own.” And then she launched into Respect Yourself. A fitting finale to a fine festival.
*Parts of this article have been revised after Nicholas Payton pointed out some errors in relation to his performance at the festival. The author has apologised to Mr Payton for the errors.
