Joseph Harry Fowler Connick Jr. is an American singer, pianist, composer, actor, and 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 US albums, and ten number-one US jazz albums, earning more number-one albums than any other artist in US jazz chart history.
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.
Kermit Ruffins is an American jazz trumpeter, singer, composer, and actor from New Orleans. He has been influenced by Louis Armstrong and Louis Jordan and says that the highest note he can hit on trumpet is a high C. He often accompanies his songs with his own vocals. Most of his bands perform New Orleans jazz standards though he also composes many of his own pieces. Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote, "Mr. Ruffins is an unabashed entertainer who plays trumpet with a bright, silvery tone, sings with off-the-cuff charm and never gets too abstruse in his material."
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.
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.
The Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band, also known as the Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band, was the brainchild of Reverend Andrew Darby Jr., pastor of Fairview Baptist Church. The band was created in 1970 after Mr. Danny Barker became a member of Fairview Baptist Church. When Mr. Barker became a member, he asked Reverend Darby what he wanted him to do in the church. Reverend Darby asked him to enlist young people in the church and in the neighborhood who played instruments and work with them as an instrumental group (band). Reverend Darby told Mr. Barker that there was a critical need to produce young musicians to carry on the rich tradition of music in New Orleans in order to ‘replenish the stock’ as adult musicians grew older. Under the leadership of Pastor Darby, Mr. Barker agreed. This, the tradition, would live on and on.
Leroy Jones is a jazz trumpeter. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Jones began playing trumpet at the age of ten, and by the time he was 12 was leading the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band, a group of young musicians organized by jazz guitarist and banjo player Danny Barker. When the musicians' union forced Barker to disband the group in 1974, Jones became a union musician and took over the running of the group, renamed the Hurricane Brass Band, himself. In 1975 or 1976, he left the group, touring for a time with Eddie Vinson and Della Reese before forming his own group, the Leroy Jones Quintet. In 1991, Jones joined the big band of Harry Connick, Jr., and the exposure with Connick's band, led to Jones' releasing his first album under his own name; Mo' Cream From The Crop came out on the Columbia label in 1994. The Leroy Jones Quintet continues to tour and record, and since 2004 Jones has also appeared with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Dr. John.
Lucien Barbarin was an American trombone player. Barbarin toured internationally with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and with Harry Connick Jr.
Daniel Moses Barker was an American jazz musician, vocalist, and author from New Orleans. He was a rhythm guitarist for Cab Calloway, Lucky Millinder and Benny Carter during the 1930s.
Marsalis Music is a jazz record label founded by Branford Marsalis in 2002.
We Are in Love is an album by American artist Harry Connick Jr., released in 1990. The multi-platinum album features Connick on piano & vocal, Russell Malone on guitar, Shannon Powell on drums, Benjamin Jonah Wolfe on double bass, and Branford Marsalis on saxophone. Joining the quartet is Connick's Big Band. Most of the tracks include an orchestral background.
Delfeayo Marsalis is an American jazz trombonist, record producer and educator.
Jeremy Davenport is an American jazz trumpeter and singer based in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Troy Andrews, also known by the stage name Trombone Shorty, is an American musician, producer, and philanthropist from New Orleans, Louisiana. He is best known as a trombone and trumpet player but also plays drums, organ, and tuba. He has worked with some of the biggest names in rock, pop, jazz, funk, and hip hop. Andrews is the younger brother of trumpeter and bandleader James Andrews III and the grandson of singer and songwriter Jessie Hill. Andrews began playing trombone at age four, and since 2009 has toured with his own band, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue.
Benjamin Jonah Wolfe is an American jazz bassist who has performed in groups with Wynton Marsalis, Harry Connick Jr., and Diana Krall. He is currently on the teaching faculty at The Juilliard School Jazz Division.
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.
Mark Braud is an American jazz trumpeter and band leader, who is a current leader of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band's New Orleans band, and Mark Braud's Jazz Giants. He has been a sideman for dozens of groups including Harry Connick, Jr., Dr. Michael White's Original Liberty Jazz Band, Henry Butler, and R&B singer Eddie Bo.
Romare Bearden Revealed is a jazz album by the Branford Marsalis Quartet, featuring Branford Marsalis, Eric Revis, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Joey Calderazzo, with guest appearances by Harry Connick Jr., Wynton Marsalis, Doug Wamble, Reginald Veal, and other members of the Marsalis family. The album, which was recorded June 23–25, 2003 at Clinton Studios in New York, New York, was recorded in celebration of a retrospective exhibit of the art of Romare Bearden which opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and subsequently traveled to San Francisco, Dallas, New York and Atlanta in 2004 and 2005. The album recorded jazz tunes whose names Bearden had used for paintings as well as original compositions.
Bourbon Street Parade is a popular jazz song written by drummer Paul Barbarin in 1949. The song is an example of how early marching bands influenced New Orleans jazz. It has become a Dixieland classic and New Orleans Jazz standard.
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.
