Goin' back to New Orleans

Once a dominant city for jazz in America, New Orleans lost it all after Hurricane Katrina. But the Thelonious Monk Institute is now trying to bring the music back.

By Matt Jung
We've Got the Monk

The new Monk Institute class performing with Terence Blanchard and Herbie Hancock.
Loyola University in New Orleans, the new site for the Thelonious Monk Institute Photo: wikipedia.org

It has only been two years since Hurricane Katrina swept through the Gulf Coast, almost completely destroying the city of New Orleans.

Immediately following the disaster, with 80 percent of the city underwater and over $80 billion in total damages, the city leaders had bigger things on their minds than to rebuild the culture.

But for some jazz musicians, it seemed a shame to give up on this former mecca for jazz music.

“New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz – and jazz is what made this city the place we know and love,” said pianist Herbie Hancock on the Loyola University in New Orleans website.

Hancock and the other directors of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz knew they could make a difference. As the world's most prestigious jazz school looked to relocate this fall after eight years at the University of Southern California, it received several offers from around the nation.

Six universities expressed interest in attracting the program, including Harvard and other Ivy League institutions. But when the Monk Institute directors received an offer from Loyola University, in the heart of New Orleans, they knew they had a chance to make a huge difference in that city.

“After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was shaken and its musical roots were threatened. I know that the [Monk] Institute will have a great impact on jazz and in our communities. We are going to work hard to help jazz and New Orleans flourish once again," said the program's artistic director Terence Blanchard, a New Orleans native, on the Loyola University website.

The directors then came up with what they call their "Commitment to New Orleans" program.

The initiative includes school and community jazz education programs to help strengthen the local school system, provide employment for New Orleans musicians, attract displaced musicians living in other areas of the country back to their hometown, and unite the city’s jazz, arts, and cultural communities.

But the school has always been dedicated to developing its students into teachers as well as musicians, an idea that Thelonious Monk greatly supported during his lifetime.

In the 1940s and 1950s, jazz greats Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and others would gather at Monk’s house to learn from each other and to share their musical knowledge.

The two-year program tries to recreate that atmosphere with its students and the top-notch jazz legends it attracts to teach. The students are expected to extend their knowledge to musicians in their communities, just as the jazz legends did to them.

And now, the institute has a chance to bring their jazz to a city that needs it the most. The program plans to stay in New Orleans and share its "Commitment to New Orleans" for at least the next four years.

The current class of 2009 includes Gordon Au (Carmichael, California) on trumpet, Joseph Johnson (Kansas City, Missouri) on bass, Johnaye Kendrick (San Diego, California) on vocals, Davy Mooney (New Orleans, Louisiana) on guitar, Vadim Neselovskyi (Odessa, Ukraine) on piano, Jake Saslow (Long Island, New York) on saxophone, and Colin Stranahan (Denver, Colorado) on drums.

These musicians will soon join the ranks of the dozens of other Monk Institute alumni at the forefront of the jazz performance and education fields.