Irvin Mayfield reconvenes the 17-piece New Orleans Jazz Orchestra

[shrugs]

In New Orleans!


JAZZ THERAPY
The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra's 'All the Saints' composition uses the tradition of a jazz funeral procession to mourn the city's losses and celebrate its rebirth
Friday, November 11, 2005
By Keith Spera
Music writer
Trumpeter, composer and New Orleans Jazz Orchestra founder Irvin Mayfield has yet to find his father.

The elder Mayfield rode out Hurricane Katrina at his Gentilly home, then disappeared during the subsequent evacuation. A few days after the storm, his musician son searched the flooded house. He discovered a flashlight and a stash of peanut butter and cigarettes in the attic, but no indication of his father's fate.


"He could be anywhere," Mayfield said this week. "He's one of those guys who never had a cell phone, never kept phone numbers. We're just waiting to hear something.

"Everybody's been asking me, 'How do you deal with this thing with your dad?' Moreso than ever, we've got to do what it is that we do. What I do is play the trumpet and write music. So that's how I'm dealing with this."

To that end, Mayfield reconvenes the 17-piece New Orleans Jazz Orchestra this week for a series billed as "the cultural reopening of New Orleans." A happy hour jam session Tuesday at the Wyndham New Orleans Hotel is followed by a Wednesday afternoon second-line procession from St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 to the Wyndham.

The series culminates with a free show Thursday at Christ Church Cathedral on St. Charles Avenue. Mayfield and NOJO will debut "All the Saints," a new composition commissioned by the church. Afterward, Mayfield leads the orchestra in a final jam session at Snug Harbor. All events are free.

"I feel like this is the greatest service I can do for my city that I love so much," Mayfield said. "To fly these musicians back home and have them here for seven days, where they're rehearsing, walking around, just being in their city and doing what they do. And use this as a catalyst to try to make the culture happen."

Sustaining the 3-year-old New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, not an easy task before Katrina, is even more of a challenge now. Modeled after Wynton Marsalis' Jazz at Lincoln Center program, NOJO seeks to sustain a permanent jazz performance and educational institution in the city of its birth.

In Katrina's wake, NOJO still managed to fulfill its previously scheduled fall tour, even adding a new opening date in Clearwater, Fla. Rachel Woods, NOJO's director of operations, handled the monumental task of tracking down scattered musicians, then booking and rebooking their flights.

"These dudes were all over, and a lot of them were moving around," Mayfield said. "I called (trumpeter) Leon Brown and he was in Shreveport. Then he went to Lafayette, then Atlanta, then Portland, then back to Atlanta."

Performance fees alone do not cover the salaries and expenses of two dozen musicians and staffers; corporate and government donations are integral to the nonprofit NOJO's business plan. A year ago, the city pledged $400,000 from its economic development fund, of which NOJO had collected half. The state promised another $100,000.

Those payments are now frozen indefinitely, said NOJO president/CEO Ronald Markham. "I don't expect to see them in my lifetime, or in my son's lifetime," Markham said.

But under the guidance of NOJO board chairman John Fernandez, an arts organization veteran previously affiliated with Carnegie Hall, Mayfield and Markham have sharpened their fund-raising skills. Prudential Financial recently paid $300,000 to be the title sponsor of the orchestra's 2005-'06 touring season. AT&T contributed another $25,000. Last week, Mayfield and Markham were in New York City, networking with benefactors at fund-raisers in New York and Connecticut.

Post-Katrina, Mayfield has appeared on "Larry King Live" and National Public Radio, among others. And he found an unlikely champion in the Episcopal church.

Before Katrina, Mayfield and the very Rev. David duPlantier, dean of Christ Church Cathedral, discussed a jazz commission to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the first Episcopal service in the Louisiana Purchase, only to table the idea.

Days after the storm, duPlantier recruited Mayfield to appear in a documentary DVD produced by the Atlanta-based Episcopal Media Center. Mayfield's explanation of jazz funeral tradition framed images of Katrina's destruction.

Then duPlantier and Mayfield resurrected the idea of a church-sponsored commission tied to the bicentennial celebration, but with Katrina as its centerpiece.

To pay for the project -- the budget runs into the tens of thousands of dollars, including the cost of transporting, housing and rehearsing the 17 musicians -- Christ Church Cathedral is using money allocated for its canceled fall concert series, and soliciting donations from Episcopal churches worldwide.

"The Episcopal Church has always had an interest in music and art, especially in response to difficult circumstances," duPlantier said. "Traditionally, the cathedral is not only a place where art is offered, but where it is commissioned.

" 'All the Saints' is a partnership of two important institutions in the city, one 200 years old, one only a couple years old, but both with a common desire to strengthen the soul of the city and its people through music and art and faith and worship."

"All the Saints" interprets Katrina and its aftermath within the structure of a jazz funeral procession. Three movements -- Requiem, Memorial, Renaissance -- span the city's death, a period of mourning and rebirth. Musical themes should strike familiar chords.

"I'm trying to use as many elements of New Orleans as possible," Mayfield said. "But this is not a Lincoln Center approach. It's not highbrow. It is what it is. If this experience has taught me anything about writing music, it's made it very clear what I am and what New Orleans is, and how we can use that.

"A lot of times musicians mimic what people are doing in New York. I'm asking them to do what they do at home. We're not trying to be the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra or the Mingus Big Band. We're trying to be the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. And we've got a lot of things to offer. This experience has taught us about the greatness of our city and what we have to pull from."

To Mayfield, Wednesday's jazz funeral is as important symbolically as the commission.

"People feel like they haven't had the opportunity to come together in the city and have a ceremony where they can heal," he said. "The jazz processional is the tool we need for rebuilding New Orleans. You start off with a slow dirge. It's a mournful time; we have lost a lot in the city.

"But we still have an embarrassment of riches. If we can celebrate what we do have, we can use that to rebuild what we don't."

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NEW ORLEANS JAZZ ORCHESTRA

What: Irvin Mayfield & the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra: A Return Home features free concerts and a second-line parade scheduled for Tuesday through Thursday.


Events: "All the Saints" happy hour jam session, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday at the Wyndham New Orleans Hotel, 100 Iberville St., Lobby Lounge, 11th Floor. Free.


"All the Saints" second-line parade, 4 p.m. Wednesday. Depart from St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 at Basin and St. Louis streets, proceed to North Rampart, Toulouse, Decatur and Iberville, ending at the Wyndham. Free.


"All the Saints" premiere, 7 p.m. (doors open at 6:30), Thursday at the Christ Church Cathedral, 2919 St. Charles Ave. Free. PBS plans to film the show for its "Religion & Ethics" program.

Post-performance jam session, 10:30 p.m. Thursday at Snug Harbor, 626 Frenchmen St. No cover