Every note of jazz traces its DNA to The Big Easy. New Orleans has produced a sound unlike anywhere else on Earth — jubilant and mournful, sacred and profane, impossibly funky and endlessly sophisticated all at once. So, the Gulf Coast Jazz Collective will recreate the full, rich texture of the Crescent City’s musical legacy in an unforgettable performance that will make you feel like you’re standing on Bourbon Street with a drink in your hand and a brass band is turning the corner.
“Crescent City: A Journey through the Soul of New Orleans Jazz” features Paul Gavin on drums, Brandon Robertson on bass, Zach Bartholomew on piano, and special guest musicians Kevin Celebi on trumpet, Derrick Harris on trombone and Zach Muth on guitar.
The concert takes place in the Music & Arts Community Center at 7 p.m. tonight.
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We don’t know when, but we do know where jazz was born. It was the Crescent City, otherwise known as New Orleans.
“Some say jazz grew out the drumming and Voodoo rituals that took place in New Orleans’ Congo Square before the Civil War. Others say jazz was born in 1895, the year Buddy Bolden started his first band,” states New Orleans & Company, the official destination sales and marketing organization for the New Orleans tourism industry. “Still others say it happened in 1917, when Nick LaRocca and his Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded the first jazz record, ‘Livery Stable Blues.’ But Ferdinand ‘Jelly Roll’ Morton had his own theory. He said, ‘It is evidently known, beyond contradiction, that New Orleans is the Cradle of Jazz, and I myself happen to be the inventor in the year 1902.’"
Whatever its origins, New Orleans’ jazz is the product of the city’s ethnically, racially and culturally diverse population that included free and enslaved African Americans, people of French, Spanish and Creole heritage, and immigrants from Cuba and the Caribbean. The result reflects a wide range of influences, from ragtime, blues, marches (syncopated brass bands) and African American religious music and gospel hymns to European classical music, popular song, minstrelsy and musicals.
It contains an improvisational element that is attributed to the need of New Orleans musicians, many of whom could not read music, to extend songs for dancers and parades. In fact, New Orleans jazz is primarily dance music, played in 2/4 or 4/4 time, as illustrated in Freddie Keppard’s Jazz Cardinals “Stock Yards Strut” (1926). It is often called Dixieland, although some historians argue that the two terms are not interchangeable, with Dixieland being a subset of New Orleans jazz.
Cornetist Charles “Buddy” Bolden is credited as establishing the first ensemble in jazz history. He improvised on the ragtime style, incorporating blues and spirituals. He was also the first to use brass instruments to play blues.
In addition to Bolden, the best known jazz greats from New Orleans include Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, Edward “Kid” Ory, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton, Freddie Keppard, Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, Joe “King” Oliver, Wynton and Ellis Marsalis, Kermit Ruffins, Danny Barker, Leadbelly (Huddie William Ledbetter), Trombone Shorty, and Jeremy Davenport.
About the Gulf Coast Jazz Collective
Founded in 2021, the Gulf Coast Jazz Collective brings the best of live Jazz performance to Southwest Florida. Under the artistic direction of drummer, educator, composer and arranger Paul Gavin, the Jazz Collective invites the best artists from the country to collaborate in concerts that span the entire genre of Jazz.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.
