The Gumbo Trio
The Flavors of Louisiana
The Jaywalkers Second Line Band
Jerry Embree Swing Band
New Orleans Jazzman Band
I am a professional musician, bandleader, composer, music producer and talent booker based in New Orleans, LA. I am also a composer and vocalist.
My primary instrument of choice are:
for jazz gigs: Yanagisawa SC-9937 Sterling Silver curved soprano saxophone (paired with Selmer mouthpiece and a Vandoren reed).
Sometimes I'll play my Yanagisawa SC-992 Bronze Curved Soprano sax for certain applications For dance, pop, and rock gigs I'll play my Yanagisawa T-9930 tenor sax (paired with Yanagisawa mouthpiece and a Fibracell reed),
As founder and Musical Director of Jazzman.com, aka Jazzman Entertainment, I organize and book an average of 600-800 gigs annually. Most of these are in the New Orleans area. I usually play personally an average of 350 400 jobs a year. I am lucky in that folks that live in New Orleans and also our many visitors all seem to love music, and there are a lot of opportunities for an artist to work here. If you don't mind playing some popular requests and if you like to please the people with repertoire, you may find yourself in demand. Fortunately, I love to make people happy with music, so I get a lot of calls. I do not do it alone - I have a team of roughly 60 musicians that I call to play the various gigs that come our way. Most of these gigs are intimate events with a lot of personal audience contact, where I get a chance to interact with the public, and answer the many questions I inevitably get about my horn and set-up.
I've had a pretty wide variety of experiences in the music industry in my 35 plus professional years in music. I worked for a record label - Mardi Gras Records (back when people bought records, then tapes, then CD's). That experience gave me a many opportunities to produced records for others and administer music publishing rights and manage copyrights. I was the Marketing Director and manager of a major recording studio for a few years (Ultrasonic Studios, New Orleans). I even developed and launched two nationally distributed radio programs - The Creole Gumbo Radio Show, and South To Louisiana, A Cajun and Zydeco Show. I leased time on the National Public Radio satellite to transmit those shows to the stations that carried them. We had more than 100 stations broadcasting them at their peak. We did receive a National Endowment for the Arts Award for those productions, among some other grants and awards, including a couple of Grammy Foundation awards. Public radio, like playing live music, is a labor of love.
I was born in Bennettsville, South Carolina (coincidentally within 20 miles of where both Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane were born). I attended the North Carolina School of the Arts from 1980-84. I graduated with a Bachelor of Music, studying under the renown classical tenor saxophonist James Houlik. I moved to New Orleans in 1985 to try and make a career in music, and I never looked back.
I live a rich life full of interesting interactions with other artists. One of my greatest professional achievements was my sax solo on the last album by the great Antoine "Fats" Domino - "Alive and Kickin". He was true original artist and thinker on every level. He taught me by example to "just be yourself".
Since 2005, I've been Musical Director for Arnaud's Restaurant, a legendary French Quarter Creole restaurant that offers fine dining paired with traditional New Orleans jazz. Established in 1918, it is the largest privately owned restaurant in New Orleans. One of my bands - The Gumbo Trio, plays there 7 nights a week plus the Sunday Jazz Brunch. From this gig, we've become known and in demand by most of the other restaurant s and hotels in New Orleans.
I've had the opportunity to perform internationally a few times - at the Umbria Jazz Festival, Umbria, Italy; New Orleans Food and Music Festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; New Orleans Music Festival in Luxembourg, and performing at Schloss Esterhazy, (home of Joseph Hayden Hall), in Eisenstadt, Austria, and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, New Orleans, LA. I also played a festival in Martinique with Sunpie and The Louisiana Sunspots.
What works for me is I like to, no - I NEED to have fun on a gig. When the band is having fun, the audience can tell, and they enjoy themselves. If the band is having fun, it is contagious to an audience. If the musicians are not having fun, it is boring to an audience.