ellis marsalis center for music

Publication: The News & Observer
Author: Marti Maguire
Date: May 30, 2015

DURHAM - Branford Marsalis grew up with the sounds of jazz music literally rising from the streets, wafting through the windows of the New Orleans home that would spawn a series of jazz giants.

And yet, the Grammy-award winning saxophonist, composer and bandleader’s career is marked by his versatility. Marsalis has played with the Grateful Dead and symphony orchestras, written Broadway scores and starred in Spike Lee movies. He started a record label, hosted a radio show and led the Tonight Show Band.

When he moved to Durham in 2002, Marsalis brought more than his varied talents and the famous surname. He also brought a legacy of service that he traces back to his musical family – one that has made its mark in the Triangle as well as his home town.

Marsalis regularly donates his time and talents to local causes, most notably the N.C. Symphony. He’s organized and performed at several concerts to benefit the organization, including the upcoming Branford Marsalis and Friends show on Tuesday that will also feature Rhiannon Giddens and The Kruger Brothers.

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Publication: Associated Press
Author: Chevel Johnson 
Date: September 19, 2011

New Orleans’ rich melting-pot history has always been a big draw for authors.

But telling it through the eyes of two antebellum 9-year-old girls — one black, one white — offers unusual perspectives on life’s challenges in the mid-19th century.

American Girl Brand LLC, a subsidiary of toy giant Mattel Inc., usually introduces its dolls (and the book characters based on them) one at a time.

In August, the company launched two — called Cecile Rey and Marie-Grace Gardner — along with a six-book series set in New Orleans that details their fictional lives, friendship, and tests they and family members face in dealing with the spread of yellow fever in 1853. Read more »

Publication: The Washington Informer
Date: September 8, 2011

On August 25, as the sixth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approached, one of the most positive responses to the catastrophe that devastated New Orleans was unveiled – The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music. Located at 1901 Bartholomew Street in the heart of the Musicians’ Village in the Upper Ninth Ward, and named for one of the city’s most influential pianists, educators and living legends, the Center will serve as a state of the art facility for the preservation and ongoing development of New Orleans music and culture.

Like Musicians’ Village, the innovative New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity project that has provided 72 single-family homes and 10 elder-friendly duplex units for the city’s displaced musicians, the Ellis Marsalis Center was the brainchild of one of Ellis’s sons, saxophonist Branford Marsalis, and one of his most celebrated pupils, singer/pianist/actor Harry Connick, Jr. “Jazz is a tremendous part of the city’s tradition,” Connick explains, “and after the storm we had to do more than just hope that the tradition would continue.” Read more »

Publication: Louisiana Weekly
Author: Geraldine Wyckoff
Date: August 29, 2011

Big Chief Little Charles Taylor of the White Cloud Hunters Indian gang and Joe Jenkins, who played percussion alongside Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., quietly sat on the front porch of Jenkins’ house in the Musicians’ Village. The two Mardi Gras Indian veterans watched as a flock of media armed with notepads and cameras scurried around the newly completed Ellis Marsalis Center for Music just across the street. Inside, internationally renowned jazz superstars saxophonist Branford Marsalis and pianist/singer Harry Connick Jr. were holding court, talking about the Center that their mutual visions, determination and much work helped create.

That it is altogether possible that one day the two Musicians’ Village residents could share their sewing, singing, and tambourine skills with young people in a multi-million dollar facility almost seems incongruous. Equally unlikely is that this Center, complete with a state-of-the-art, acoustically superior performance and recording hall, sits in the Upper Ninth Ward. Not that long ago, the coming together of such disparate entities would have been deemed, well, at least improbable. Read more »

By Bill Capo
Eyewitness News
August 25, 2011

NEW ORLEANS — There was a standing room only crowd, with actress Renee Zellweger in the audience, for the dedication of the new Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, the centerpiece of Habitat for Humanity’s Musicians Village project in the Ninth Ward.

Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis played key roles in developing the Musicians Village, and the center, but as performers, they called this hall acoustically perfect.

“You’re in the middle of the Upper 9th Ward,” said Connick.  “You’ve got the highest level of state-of-the-art technical facility here. it is like all these worlds coming together.”

“You could bring a string quartet in here, and they could play without one shred of amplification, and everybody in here could hear every note in here regardless of the volume,” raved Marsalis.

“You could also bring Dr. John in here with his full band, and people would love every minute of it.”
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Publication: WWLTV.com
Reporting By: Bill Capo
Date: August 25, 2011

Please visit WWLTV’s website for video footage covering the opening of the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music!

NEW ORLEANS — There was a standing room only crowd, with actress Renee Zellweger in the audience, for the dedication of the new Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, the centerpiece of Habitat for Humanity’s Musicians Village project in the Ninth Ward.

Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis played key roles in developing the Musicians Village, and the center, but as performers, they called this hall acoustically perfect. Read more »

THE TMES PICAYUNE/ NOLA.com
August 27, 2011
By Keith Spera

Two days before Thursday’s official unveiling of the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, I asked Harry Connick Jr., a driving force behind its creation, if he felt like an expectant father.

Thursday, August 25, 2011
By Keith Spera
The Times-Picayune

On Wednesday afternoon, Harry Connick Jr. and Branford Marsalis kicked the proverbial tires at the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, the new, multimillion-dollar arts, educational and community center in the upper 9th Ward’s Musicians’ Village.

They jokingly checked under classroom desks for gum. They strode the dance studio’s wood floor. They demonstrated the 1.5-millisecond echo in the 150-capacity, acoustically engineered performance hall.

Had such a facility existed when he was a boy, Connick marveled, “I would have been here every day.”

The Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, named for Branford’s father, the storied jazz pianist and educator, officially opens today with a private celebration.

Gov. Bobby Jindal and Mayor Mitch Landrieu are expected to speak. Connick, the senior Marsalis, and Branford and several of his siblings are slated to perform.
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Publication: Felix Online
Author: Charles Betts
Date: February 28, 2011

New Orleans music is an addiction. Its diversity portrays every emotional state and as the legendary jazz musician Ellis Marsalis puts it, at a time when individualism is becoming an endangered species, the sounds of the Bayou represent a celebration of the individual. Put simply, without it life would be emptier.

Harry Connick Jr. is arguably the city’s most famous living export, having obtained more number-one albums than any other artist in US jazz chart history. He has taken his native music across the globe, to the delight of audiences that stamp and cheer to the joyful noise. He has re-created the next-best thing to Mardi Gras at venues including the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Salle Pleyel in Paris, and on Broadway in New York.
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