Musicians' Village | |
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Neighborhood | |
Coordinates: 29°58′27″N90°02′00″W / 29.9743°N 90.0333°W |
Musicians' Village is a neighborhood located in the Upper Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana. Musicians Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis teamed up with Habitat for Humanity International and New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity to create the village for New Orleans musicians who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina.
Per February 2007, the Musicians' Village is "the largest-scale, highest-profile, and biggest-budget rebuilding project to have gotten underway in New Orleans post-Katrina. [1]
The idea of bringing music back to New Orleans was popular, and by September 2006 the entire area, including the Baptist Crossroads project, was known and referred to as Musicians' Village. [2]
Keys to the first three houses were given on June 1, 2006. New homeowners Fredy Omar con su Banda and Jerome Deleno "J.D." Hill - with "J.D. and the Jammers" - played for the 300 or more people who had gathered for the dedication ceremony and party. [3]
Politicians George W. Bush, Kathleen Blanco, Ray Nagin and Bill Jefferson volunteered at the Musicians' Village on April 27, 2006. They put on tool belts and hoisted triangular roof beam sections up to workers scampering across the wooden skeletons of new houses. Then they went inside the framework, talked with individual volunteers, before Nagin and Bush climbed up and started hammering nails handed up to them by Blanco and Jefferson. [4] Hootie & The Blowfish brought their band and crew to New Orleans for five days of building houses, on October 16–20, 2006. [5] Former president Jimmy Carter worked in December 2006. [6] Barack Obama took part in painting a home, held discussions, received a tour of the area and was entertained with music by J.D. Hill. Karekin II, leader of the Armenian Apostolic Church, helped build a home on October 17, 2007, [7] and senator John Edwards helped on January 30, 2008. [8]
A centerpiece of the village is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, dedicated to celebrating the music and musicians of New Orleans and to the education and development of homeowners and others who live nearby. The center features indoor and outdoor performance spaces as well as practice rooms and classrooms. The center has 51 off-street parking spaces. The center will be managed by the nonprofit foundation New Orleans Habitat Musicians Village Inc. The two-story center contains a 170-seat theater and performance hall with movable seats, including dressing and practice rooms. A courtyard with a retractable roof will be between this center and a smaller community center that will contain meeting rooms, offices, classrooms and a community Internet room. Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis have been "heavily involved in the design process" of the center, according to Jim Pate.
In April 2007, the plans for the building won approval from the City Planning Commission. Engineers began grading the site in May, 2007. The groundbreaking was kicked off on September 13, 2007, with a celebration that included performances from Bob French and the Original Tuxedo Band and Shamarr Allen Combo, with guest artists Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis sitting in. The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music opened at the end of August 2011 in New Orleans's Upper 9th Ward. [9]
In 2010, the founders of the Village were awarded the Honor Award by the National Building Museum for their work in civic innovation and community development.
In 2012, Connick and Marsalis received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.
Joseph Harry Fowler Connick Jr. is an American singer, pianist, composer, actor, and former television host. As of 2019, he has sold over 30 million records worldwide. Connick is ranked among the top 60 best-selling male artists in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with 16 million in certified sales. He has had seven top 20 U.S. albums, and ten number-one U.S. jazz albums, earning more number-one albums than any other artist in U.S. jazz chart history as of 2009.
Wellman Braud was an American jazz upright bassist. His family sometimes spelled their last name "Breaux", pronounced "Bro".
Wynton Learson Marsalis is an American trumpeter, composer, and music instructor, who is currently the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has been active in promoting classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards, and his oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Marsalis is the only musician to have won a Grammy Award in both jazz and classical categories in the same year.
Jason Marsalis is an American jazz drummer, vibraphone player, composer, producer, band leader, and member of the Marsalis family of musicians. He is the youngest son of Dolores Ferdinand Marsalis and the late Ellis Marsalis, Jr.
Alvin Batiste Sr. was an American avant-garde jazz clarinetist, who was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. He taught at his own jazz institute at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Ellis Louis Marsalis Jr. was an American jazz pianist and educator. Active since the late 1940s, Marsalis came to greater attention in the 1980s and 1990s as the patriarch of the musical Marsalis family, when sons Branford and Wynton became popular jazz musicians.
Lucien Barbarin was an American trombone player. Barbarin toured internationally with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and with Harry Connick Jr.
Terence Oliver Blanchard is an American jazz trumpeter and composer. He has also written two operas and more than 80 film and television scores. Blanchard has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Original Score for BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods, both directed by Spike Lee, a frequent collaborator.
Marsalis Music is a jazz record label founded by Branford Marsalis in 2002.
A Celebration of New Orleans Music to Benefit MusiCares Hurricane Relief 2005 is a benefit album, with tracks "from the vault" by an array of New Orleans artists.
Delfeayo Marsalis is an American jazz trombonist, record producer and educator.
"All These People" is the first single from Harry Connick Jr.'s 2007 album Oh my NOLA, and the single was released on iTunes on August 29, 2006. Music and lyrics by Harry Connick Jr.
Oh, My NOLA is an album from Harry Connick Jr. with his big band. The album was released in 2007, and contains well-known songs associated with New Orleans, as well as 4 new songs composed by Connick, who sings and plays the piano, conducts, arranges and orchestrates the album.
Jeremy Davenport is an American jazz trumpeter and singer based in New Orleans, Louisiana.
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Robert Hurst is an American jazz bassist.
Branford Marsalis is an American saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. While primarily known for his work in jazz as the leader of the Branford Marsalis Quartet, he also performs frequently as a soloist with classical ensembles and has led the group Buckshot LeFonque. From 1992 to 1995 he led the Tonight Show Band.
Shannon Powell is an American jazz and ragtime drummer. He has toured internationally and played with Ellis Marsalis, Harry Connick, Jr., Danny Barker, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Diana Krall, Earl King, Dr. John, Preservation Hall, Marcus Roberts, John Scofield, Jason Marsalis, Leroy Jones, Nicholas Payton, and Donald Harrison Jr. Powell toured and recorded with fellow New Orleans native, Harry Connick Jr.
Calvin A. Johnson Jr. is an American saxophonist, bandleader, composer, producer, and actor from New Orleans, Louisiana. A multi-instrumentalist, he is best known as a tenor and soprano saxophone player but also performs and records on alto and baritone saxophones, clarinet, and flute. He has worked with many of the biggest names in New Orleans music, including Aaron Neville, Harry Connick Jr., the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Mystikal, Irvin Mayfield, Mannie Fresh, and others. Johnson is the nephew of New Orleans clarinetist Ralph Johnson, a longtime member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He began playing saxophone at the age of seven, and since 2008 has been playing with his own band, Calvin Johnson & Native Son.
Steve Masakowski is an American jazz guitarist, educator, and inventor. He invented the guitar-based keytar and the switch pick, and has designed three custom-built seven-string guitars. He developed an approach to playing the guitar by using his pick design, allowing him to switch from fingerpicking to flatpicking.