New Orleans jazz takes center stage at Tucson festival concert

Jazz trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis and his Uptown Jazz Orchestra were playing the Allstate Sugar Bowl outdoor concert in New Orleans on the afternoon of New Year’s Eve.

Hours later, a man rammed his pickup truck into the late-night crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street in the famed French Quarter.

At least 14 people died and dozens more were injured.

In a city that survived the deadly devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the dozens of tropical storms and hurricanes that followed had to do what they always do in times of tragedy: survive.

“New Orleans is the greatest survival city, and the music will always survive,” said New Orleans native Marsalis. “Whatever New Orleans has been through, we find a way to recover. And I would say that goes way back to the resiliency of the folks 300, 400 years ago.”

Marsalis, the middle brother of the famous jazz royal family that includes Brandon, Wynton and Jason Marsalis, believes jazz music is the elixir for all that ails the Crescent City.

“That’s the reason jazz, the original American music, was founded in New Orleans,” said Marsalis, who is making his Tucson debut on Sunday, Jan. 19, as part of the 11th annual HSL Properties Tucson Jazz Festival. “It’s a product of the people. The musicians kind of have that obligation to really represent for the people.”

Hours after the tragedy on New Year’s night, Marsalis played a show at the legendary Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro.

“We started off with ‘Just A Closer Walk With Thee,’ which is, of course, a church hymn. And it’s something slow, something that we usually play at funerals,” he recalled, adding that they acknowledged the tragedy of the night before and offered prayers for the victims, survivors and the city at large.

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And then, in true New Orleans and jazz fashion, they picked up the tempo and played the quintessential brassy New Orleans funeral march “Whoopin’ Blues.”

“That’s just the New Orleans thing,” he explained during a phone interview from home in the Big Easy early this month. “The thing is, you can’t spend too much time dwelling in the sadness. ... The community is just very important in New Orleans, and that’s one of our strengths, is coming together. And we’ll continue to do that and support each other. I think great things happen when that occurs.”

The Grammy-winning Marsalis, an NEA Jazz Master and producer who has produced 125 recordings, brings the party to every performance. His audiences rarely sit; more often than not you’ll see them dancing along to Uptown Jazz Orchestra’s mix of jazz, R&B and swing.

“We try to to play different styles. So, for example, we just did a gig and it was mostly Motown music. So we’re playing Stevie Wonder. We’re playing some Michael Jackson. We’re playing like The Van-Dells, Martha Reeves,” he said. “In the middle of that set, I was like, ‘Count Basie,’ so we broke out the Basie and man, folks got up and start dancing to that.”

He also will play a couple tracks off his latest release, “Crescent City Jewels,” which sat in the Top 10 on the jazz charts for eight weeks after its release on Aug. 30.

Marsalis said festivals like Tucson’s, which has a handful of prominent next-gen artists — among them, Japanese jazz pianist Miki Yamanka; New York’s New Jazz Underground, a trio that merges traditional jazz with modern swing and today’s hip-hop, house/afro-beats and Afro-Cuban music; and Tucson native and jazz pianist Arcoiris Sandoval and her Sonic Asylum Trio — is helping to dispel the notion that jazz audiences behave like classical music audiences and sit in silence while the band plays.

Today’s jazz audiences are more inclined to ditch their seats for the duration and dance while the band plays, Marsalis said.

“And New Orleans (jazz), that’s just a whole other thing,” he said. “A lot of people, they study jazz in schools, and they think about it, and some folks take what I consider an academic approach. You might hear them say cerebral or intellectual ... but we’re gonna do like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. ... They managed to keep that balance and that joy and that expression. When you hear it, it just makes you feel good. And that’s the main thing for us is that the folks have to feel good.”

The rising New Orleans-based New Breed Brass Band opens the show for Marsalis and Uptown Jazz Orchestra beginning at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at the Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress St. Tickets are $45-$75 through ticketmaster.com.