Join us on Friday, November 4th at 8:00 PM CDT for the Black Music Education and Mentorship in New Orleans. This event is co-sponsored by the American Studies Association in conjunction with their conference in New Orleans.
A quintet of Courtney Bryan, Natasha Harris, Max Moran, James Rivers, and Herlin Riley will also perform.
There will be a cash bar.
This program takes place inside our third-floor Performance Center, listening room. Admission is free and open to the public, seating is limited and offered first-come, first-serve.
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This session offers perspectives on New Orleans musical culture through performance, critical reflections, and conversation. The session will consist of a performance and artist commentary from Courtney Bryan and members of her ensemble that will bring to light issues of creative improvisation and mentorship within Black New Orleans musical traditions; a conversation about the formative and lasting impact of legendary New Orleans musician, music educator, and marching band director, Yvonne Busch between Leonard Smith, director of the award-winning documentary film, A Legend in the Classroom: The Life Story of Ms. Yvonne Busch, Matt Sakakeeny, Tulane music professor and author of Roll With it: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans, and renowned New Orleans jazz drummer, Herlin Riley, a former student of Yvonne Busch’s; a collaborative performance bringing together Courtney Bryan’s ensemble with Herlin Riley; and a concluding period for audience interaction through comments and questions.
The goal of the session is to highlight the all too often overlooked centrality of Black women within the historical and contemporary formations of New Orleans music. Additionally, there will be an exploration and highlighting of the importance of cross-generational education in New Orleans musical communities and the ways that pedagogy, mentorship, and collaboration have fostered and continue to foster the strengthening, cultivation, and expansion of tradition within New Orleans musicianship.
By offering this critical focus on issues of gender, education, collaboration, and mentorship within and informing Black New Orleans musical traditions, our intent is to push back against ideas of New Orleans musicianship that may overshadow aspects of its complexity and multidimensionality. While it cannot be ignored that New Orleans music (not unlike many musical traditions) has been largely shaped in relationship to masculine biases and sexist attitudes and structures, it is certainly the case that women have navigated those barriers to impact the music as forerunners, leaders, and teachers/mentors. Likewise, while taking seriously the reality that Black New Orleans music has emerged and continues to exist in a context rich with local history and tradition for musicians to draw from, there is also a deep commitment to training, instruction, and mentorship that disrupts the idea of New Orleans musicianship as a primarily intuitive practice.
Part I: Discussion About Music Education in New Orleans
Courtney Bryan (composer, Tulane University)
Natasha Harris (Pinettes Brass Band, and classmate of Courtney’s at NOCCA)
Max Moran (bassist)
Moderator: Carter Mathes (Rutgers University)
Part II: Tribute to Yvonne Busch
James Rivers (saxophone, student of Ms. Busch)
Herlin Riley (drummer, student of Ms. Busch)
Leonard Smith III (filmmaker of A Legend in the Classroom-The Life Story of Ms Yvonne Busch)
Moderator: Matt Sakakeeny (Tulane University)
Part III: Performance
A quintet of Courtney Bryan, Natasha Harris, Max Moran, James Rivers, and Herlin Riley.
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Courtney Bryan
Composer and pianist Courtney Bryan’s music is in conversation with various musical genres, including jazz and experimental music, as well as traditional gospel, spirituals, and hymns. With degrees from Oberlin Conservatory (BM), Rutgers University (MM), and Columbia University (DMA) with advisor George Lewis, Bryan completed postdoctoral studies in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Bryan is the Albert and Linda Mintz Professor of Music at Newcomb College in the School of Liberal Arts, Tulane University and a Creative Partner with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. She was the 2018 music recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a 2019 Bard College Freehand Fellow, a 2019-20 recipient of the Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Music Composition, and a 2020 United States Artists Fellow.
Carter Mathes
Carter Mathes is associate professor of English and Director of the Rutgers Advanced Institute for Critical Caribbean Studies at Rutgers University. His first book, Imagine the Sound: Experimental African American Literature After Civil Rights (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) focuses on the relationship between sound, experimental music, and Black literary innovation during the 1960s and 1970s. His second book, Ecologies of Funk: Expanding the Circum-Caribbean Imaginary, considers alternative forms of spiritual practice circulating between Jamaica and New Orleans as they shape literary and musical responses to ecological and racial catastrophe during the twentieth century. He is co-editor of the volume, "Don't Say Goodbye to the Porkpie Hat": The Larry Neal Critical Reader (under contract), and associate editor of Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture (University of California Press).
Herlin Riley
Since coming of age in the nurturing environment of a very musical family and a distinguished bloodline of drummers, New Orleans native Herlin Riley emerged from that most creative era of all things rhythmic in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, to enliven the ensembles of such influential and demanding improvisers as pianist Ahmad Jamal and trumpeter Wynton Marsalis through his commanding yet elegant rhythmic presence. His authoritative style of melodic percussion is deeply imbued in the fertile creative soil of the Crescent City, encompassing as it does the entire length and breadth of America’s ongoing musical journey.
Matt Sakakeeny
Matt Sakakeeny is an anthropologist of music at Tulane University. His work relates music and sound to structures of inequality, especially anti-Black racism in New Orleans. His book, Roll With It: Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans, follows brass band musicians as they march off the streets and into nightclubs, festival grounds, and recording studios. He is co-editor of the reference work Keywords in Sound, a collection of twenty entries on sound written by leading scholars in the field of sound studies, and co-editor of the recent volume Remaking New Orleans: Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity. At Tulane, he teaches courses on a variety of topics ranging from classical music to New Orleans music.
Leonard Smith III
Leonard Smith III is a personal historian. Since 1975, he has been involved in every aspect of historical research from genealogy, photography, technology, storytelling, film-making, and music. Leonard's company, LS3 Studios, has produced award-winning documentaries. Leonard’s film "A Legend in the Classroom - The Life Story of Ms. Yvonne Busch” is a loving portrait of his childhood music teacher. His most recent project, “A Place Called Desire” is the story of the community Leonard grew up in the 60s and 70s in New Orleans. That film was winner of the Best Documentary and Winner of the Jury Audience Award in the Black Film Festival of New Orleans, and winner the Award of Recognition Impact DOCS Award, a Silver Telly Award, and a Gold Digital AVA Award.
Natasha Harris
Natasha Harris was playing with another band in 2007 when she got called to sit in with New Orleans’ first and only all-women brass band, The Original Pinettes.“We only practiced together for an hour before a parade,” Harris says of the group she now spends birthdays with. “They had me soloing every other song shortly after that.” Harris is a kind of triple-threat: She’s the saxophonist in the Pinettes, a Black woman working full time in IT, and the founder of Voter Ride, a transportation service to polling places. “Something I want to share with all young Black girls, is that you can be successful in male-dominated fields,” says Harris, who works as a business support analyst at USAA. Harris started Voter Ride for the 2020 presidential election and orchestrated 20 volunteers to provide 75 rides from private residences to polling places. She hopes to turn it into a full nonprofit for smaller elections in the future. Harris also writes, arranges and composes for the Pinettes. Her favorite original is “Ain’t No City,” a song about being proud of her city.“I don’t know if Natasha Harris from Chicago or New York would be the Natasha Harris that’s from New Orleans,” she says. — LIAM PIERCE
Max Moran
Max Moran is a Louisiana born musician and composer who has become a first-call bassist across several genres in New Orleans' thriving music scene. He composes in various styles for TV & Film and for his bands Neospectric and The Bridge Trio. In 2019, Max Moran & Neospectric received Gambit's "Big Easy Entertainment Award" for Best New/Emerging Artist.
James Rivers
James Rivers joined the Booker T. Washington High School marching band under Ms. Yvonne Busch in 1951 and has been a leading saxophonist in New Orleans for seven decades. He has played every Jazz Fest since 1969. Rivers is known for switching up between saxophone, clarinet, flute, harmonica, and bagpipes, and playing an equally diverse variety of musical styles. He continues to perform regularly at The Jazz Playhouse in New Orleans.