Photo Credit: Dino Perrucci
After three thrilling days of performances, New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival returned to the historic Fair Grounds Race Course on Sunday, April 28 to close out its first block of programming. Concluding its first weekend, Jazz Fest rolled out another staggering lineup of 72 acts that swarmed 12 festival stages through the course of the day, welcoming local legends, longstanding icons, rising stars and global sensations to unite in a powerful celebration of the city’s culture. Some of the day’s most thrilling sets came from The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Patrice Rushen, Rebirth Brass Band, Heart, The Allman Betts Band, Béla Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart and Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals.
Sunday’s bill spotlighted the thriving big band scene of The Big Easy, bringing out some of the genre’s heavyweights to fully express the diversity of the regional style. Between the jazz-inflected vernacular of the 1977-founded Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the funk-forward 40-year Rebirth Brass Band–both of which have been honored with Grammy Awards–big band music was shown in full swing across the festival. Thus far in the series, the music has found a consistent home in the Economy Hall Tent, which on Sunday welcomed former Preservation Hall bandleader Wendell Brunious & the New Orleans All Stars and Dirty Dozen trombonist Stephen Walker N’em, among others.
The spirit of improvisation and historically-conscious genre revivalism continued with a set from legendary banjo player and bandleader Béla Fleck, who took the stage with the all-star band that has joined him throughout the My Bluegrass Heart tour. Alongside the incomparable assembly of Michael Cleveland, Sierra Hull, Justin Moses, Mark Schatz and Bryan Sutton, Fleck presented an hour and a half of the full-hearted Americana for which he’s renowned, complete with lightning-quick picking and original compositions like “Boulderdash.” Fleck wrapped his set with a rousing 11-minute treatment of George Gershwin’s legendary 1928 composition “Rhapsody in Blue,” which the performer reworked for a banjo lead voice as “Rhapsody in Blue(grass)” on his 2024 Gershwin tribute album.
Sunday’s suite was completed by a dazzling array of headliners, including Devon Allman and Duane Betts’ renowned Southern-jam powerhouse The Allman Betts Band, the slick and soulful R&B of Anderson .Paak & The Free Nationals and storied R&B and fusion figurehead Patrice Rushen. Another exhilarating headline set came from Heart, who closed out the Gentilly Stage with the endlessly iconic “Crazy On You.” As a final taste of New Orleans culture for weekend one, legendary Cash Money Records rapper Juvenile performed alongside producer and NOLA hip-hop pathbreaker Manny Fresh, delivering classics like “Big Ballin’” and “Back That Azz Up” in a continuation of the “Juvie Renaissance,” which has brought a critical re-appraisal of the city’s foundational hip-hop scene in the past year.
See the sights from night four of New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in the gallery below, courtesy of photographer Dino Perrucci. For more information on the artists coming to the festival next week, click here.
