Faulkner Society News
Published by
The Pirate's Alley Faulkner Society, Inc.
624 Pirate's Alley
New Orleans, LA 70116
(504) 586-1609
Faulkhouse@aol.com

My New Orleans Is Jazz April 26
To Feature Hurricane Brass Band
And An Exciting Look At Jazz
By Jazz Authorities Henry Lacey,
Tom Piazza, And Harry Shearer

My New Orleans, the new series sponsored by the Faulkner Society, each month zeroes on a facet of the city's unique character. The next event, My New Orleans is Jazz will feature a benefit performance by the Hurricane
Brass Band of Holland and will take place from 6 to 9 p . m. April 26 at The Cabildo on Jackson Square. Co-presenters of the event with the Faulkner Society are The Arts Council of New Orleans,The Louisiana State Museum and the New Orleans
Jazz and Heritage Festival. Funds realized from ticket sales ($15 per person) will be used to augment a live music grant for the My New Orleans series provided by the New Orleans Musicians' Center, founded and directed by Bethany Ewald Bultman and Johann Bultman. Grants from NOMC are funded by generous underwriting by Jazz Aspen

Jazz experts participating in this event will include Dr. Henry C. Lacey, jazz authority and Dillard University professor; fiction and jazz writer Tom Piazza; and actor, author, NPR talk show host Harry Shearer. Dr. Lacey will
introduce the program with a discussion of why New Orleans became the birthplace of jazz. Piazza will talk about understanding jazz, and Harry Shearer will talk about loving jazz and wanting to play it. The 45-minute talk will be
followed by a question and answer period.

Piazza, a regular member of the Faulkner Society's annual Words & Music faculty, has published two books recently, a post-Katrina memoir, Why New Orleans Matters, which has been selected by the Louisiana Endowment for the
Humanities as one of two "Books of the Year", and Understanding Jazz. Tom, a Grammy-winning jazz writer and jazz pianist, will sign his latest jazz book at My NewOrleans is Jazz. Harry Shearer, long known as the voice of more than a
dozen characters on TV's longest-running comedy ever, The Simpsons , and as the bass-playing Derek Smalls of This is Spinal Tap, is now branching out. This year, he's released a new CD of comedy about the television news anchors suddenly
leaving en masse, Dropping Anchors, and a DVD of highlights from his work on Saturday Night Live and HBO, including the classic Men's Synchronized Swimming, with Martin Short and Christopher Guest. This fall, Harry appears in Guest's
latest ensemble film, For Your Consideration, and his first work of prose fiction, a comic novel called Not Enough Indians, will be published in September. Shearer lives in Southern California and New Orleans with his wife, the singer-composer Judith Owen. Together, they own a new record/DVD company, Courgette,distributed by Warners/ADA. Shearer is a contributor to the book My New Orleans: Ballads to the Big Easy by Her Sons, Daughters, and Lovers, edited by Faulkner Society co-founder Rosemary James and benefiting the Society. Shearer will sign at the event. Like Piazza, Shearer is both a "words" and a "music" man. He plays bass. So is Dr. Henry C. Lacey, whose avocation is the trumpet, is a member of the board of directors and historian of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and Foundation. He is Presidential Professor of
English at Dillard University, where he teaches such offerings as Survey of African American Literature, African American Poetry, and Jazz in Literature. Author of To Raise, Destroy and Create: The Poetry, Drama, and Fiction of Amiri Baraka
(LeRoi Jones), he has contributed to such publications as Obsidian II, and The Oxford Companion to African American Literature.

The band's appearance is made possible through the good graces of one of its members, Dr. Klaus Lumma(alias Fats Van Gerolstein). The band performs frequently in Europe with such well known New Orleans born artists as Lillian Boutte. It is linked in New Orleans with the Tremé Brass Band. The Hurricane Brass Band (named for the drinks, not Katrina) has done numerous fundraisers for the people of New Orleans, especially those who live of Tremé and Arabi.
The band also has close connections to the professional photographer Armand "sheik" Richardson and to Father Jerome G. LeDoux of St. Augustine's Church at Governor Nicholls and St. Claude.

The band will form on Pirate's Alley at 5:45 and second line into Jackson Square, where they will play one number before entering The Cabildo. Those attending are cordially invited to second line with the band. Funds from the event
will augment the grant the Society received from The New Orleans Musicians' Clinic to provide live music for the series.

The event also will include food and wine.

Open to the public, tickets are $15 and must be purchased in advance.

They will be available at Faulkner House Books from April 19 until 6 p. m. on the day of the event. Alternatively, tickets purchased by phone or e-mail with a credit card and the Faulkner Society will e-mail a pass to you to be printed out
as your ticket.

New Blog Project Initiated By Loyola University
Designed To Keep New Orleans Alive In The Minds
Of Americans; All Are Encouraged To Post Their
Responses About New Orleans, Her Past And Her Future

Rosemary James, author and co-founder of the Society, is among New
Orleanians
invited to
Participate in a new blogging initiative instigated by Dr. Boyd Blundell of Loyola University.
The project is underway now.

The link is:

afterthelevees.tpmcafe.com

Boyd had this to say about the project:. "I'm the Ethicist in the Religious Studies department at Loyola, and I specialize in narrative and its role in ethical decision making. My research area gave rise to this idea because I firmly
believe that the way the story of New Orleans is told is going to be the key variable in determining whether New Orleans thrives, or even whether it lives or dies. There's no protected turf here, and very few constraints.
Getting the story of "when Katrina met NOLA" out there in a way that TPM's readership (a
very educated and influential bunch) can understand and relate to is an across-the-board goal."

Look forward to seeing your responses to the dialogue underway.