Maci B. Mason

Opening ceremony

Maci B. Mason is a 13 year old singing sensation. She has an angelic voice that only God himself could have blessed her with. With her new single “Just Stand” she says “Just when you give up God shows up and fix you up with his holy hands”. Sometimes when we are going through something, it seems as though nothing we do can fix the situation. So in Maci’s song “Just Stand” she says, “You” stop trying to fix the problem/s so God can show up, because only God can step in and truly make the difference.

March 2017 Maci sung The National Anthem at the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans Basketball game. Maci has sung on numerous occasions in numerous venues, all the way from the greater New Orleans area to Nashville, TN. Maci has sung along the side of one of her idols, Pastor Shirley Caesar, performed at the 2016 Zulu Lundi Gras, 2016’s Gospel In The Park in Gonzales, LA. and hosted her own concert at the age of 8 in Mandeville, LA. April 3, 2017 Maci’s first single “Just Stand” was released and is now available for download. She is also featured on a song with Gospel Artists Gail Fly and Carsie Hall called “Dependence Day” which was released in 2015.

http://www.facebook.com/macibmason

http://www.youtube.com/macibmason

NEW SUIT

3:30 – 4:40 pm

New Suit is a New Orleans, LA-based musical group specializing in ’60-70’s “old-school” soul/R&B music and we also cover a wide-range of popular music from a variety of genres to “suit” any public or private events.
New Suit has performed in numerous locations across the U.S. and abroad are a 6-member professional music act. New Suit was specifically formed with the goal of bringing “great music done right” to our audiences with a “make you move” groove that comes straight from the heart and soul of each highly-seasoned band member. New Suit provides both a visual and precision musical show performance geared toward providing a memorable experience for our audiences.

http://newsuitband.com/

STEPHANIE JORDAN

5:00 – 6:10 pm

“Local chanteuse Stephanie Jordan set the anthem on a slow burn Sunday night (Feb 17, 2008), delivering the most smoldering rendition of the song since Marvin Gaye performed it at another NBA All-Star Game more than 20 years ago… Another blazing light in our constellation” writes Chris Rose.

Selected for the cover of the World’s Who’s Who in Jazz; “SHOWBIZ, PIONEERS, BEST SINGERS, ENTERTAINERS AND MUSICIANS FROM 1606 TO THE PRESENT,” the London Monthly Herald declares, “Ms. Stephanie Jordan in her silk green dress catches your eyes. She reminds me of the flashy dashy days of Josephine Baker at the Lido in Paris, the author referred to her as “The classy lady of modern Jazz!”

“Stephanie Jordan, is a lady with a great set of pipes. … Anyone who has ever romanced their honey to Johnny Adams’s moody, lounge-lizard smoky vocals on ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’ will thrill to Stephanie’s silk-between-the-fingers treatment of that song, the title cut.”
– Jason Berry – Gambit Weekly Music

“After Hurricane Katrina, an extraordinary cohort of singers-among them, in no particular order, Shirley Caesar, Aaron and Arthur Neville, Cassandra Wilson, Diane Reeves, Elvis Costello, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, James Taylor, and Bette Midler-convened at the Rose Theatre to perform a benefit relief concert for the victims of the catastrophic. On that memorable night; none sang with greater authority or emotional resonance than Stephanie Jordan, who enthralled the packed house and a national PBS NPR audience of millions with an ascendant reading of “Here’s To Life.” Framed by her siblings Marlon (trumpet), Kent (flute), and Rachel (violin), each, like their sister, a native New Orleanian newly uprooted from their home. Jordan brought the concert to its climax, rendering the Phyllis Molinary lyric-an instant classic when the late Shirley Horn recorded it in 1991—with impeccable diction, dead-center pitch, and a personal point of view, acknowledging Horn’s antecedent version while drawing independent conclusions about tempo, phrasing, and dynamics. In the process, Jordan… revealed a fully evolved tonal personality, one that can be mentioned in a conversation about such distinguished mentors and influences as Horn, Abbey Lincoln, and Nancy Wilson.” (Ted Panken / Jazz at Lincoln Center Playbill)

Ms. Jordan performed the national anthem alongside Grammy Award-winning saxophonist Branford Marsalis and guitarist Jonathan Dubose at the 2008 NBA All-Star Game in New Orleans. She has appeared live on NPR Talk of the Nation, the Kennedy Center, Jazz Standard New York, Central Park, Marians Jazz room in Bern, Switzerland, St. Croix Blue Bay Jazz Fest, Manship Theatre in Baton Rouge, Duke Ellington Festival, Washington, D.C., Chicago Jazz Fest Heritage, Glenwood Springs, Co., the New Orleans Ladies of Jazz, Adagio’s Jazz Club in Savannah, Hayti Heritage Center in Durham, Sweet Lorraine’s in New Orleans and is a regular at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Jordan has been inducted as a member of the New Orleans Magazine Jazz All-Stars for 2008.

http://www.stephaniejordan.com/

https://www.facebook.com/stephanie.jordan.5494360

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram

6:30 – 7:40 pm

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram was born to Princess Pride Ingram and Christopher Ingram in 1999. Exposed to the rich Gospel music emanating from his family’s church, combined with the Blues he heard being played by musicians in his Delta neighborhood, also learning at the Delta Blues Museum under the tutelage of Daddy Rich and Bill Howl – N – Madd Perry and being a cousin to the great and legendary Country music singer, Charlie Pride, Kingfish became a natural sponge of musical talent.

At the tender age of 6, Kingfish began playing the drums. Three years later at the age of 9, he took up the bass guitar. At the age of 11, he began playing lead guitar. By the age of 14, he had mastered all three instruments and has added vocals to his ever growing list of talents. Kingfish’s guitar influences run the gamut of the Blues from the Delta Blues of Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, and Lightnin’ Hopkins to the electric Blues of B.B. King, Albert King, Big Jack Johnson, Albert Collins, Freddie King, Lefty Dizz, Lucky Peterson, Little Jimmy King and Buddy Guy to the Blues Rock of Lance Lopez, Joe Bonamassa, Eric Gales, Stevie Ray Vaughn, The Allman Brothers, Jonny Lang, Steve Marriott, Prince, Michael Burks and so many others. Surprisingly at such a young age, he can play just like his idols and mentors and possesses the additional ability to create a Blues sound entirely his own. It is refreshing to see a young person return to his musical roots and master a genre of music that was created and was popular even before his grandparents’ generation and renew its popularity by breathing new life into the music.

Kingfish has shared the stage with household names such as Bob Margolin, Eric Gales, Rick Derringer, Guitar Shorty, Buddy Guy and many more. He has played festivals and venues all over the U.S. and has performed in six different countries! He’s even been a guest on the Rachael Ray Show and the Steve Harvey Show! Kingfish has also performed in Washington D.C. at The White House, right in front of First Lady Michelle Obama! Even though he’s from the Delta, surrounded by all of its plantations and he travels Highway 49 and Highway 61 on a regular basis, unlike many of his musical predecessors from Mississippi, Kingfish never had to pick cotton or sell his soul to the devil at the infamous Crossroads. Yet, this child prodigy’s soul is possessed with the feeling, passion and fire of the much older men who created the most important genre of American music, the Blues.

Kingfish is a living phenomenon, soon destined to be a living legend!!!

https://www.facebook.com/CKI662/

https://www.christonekingfishingram.com/

ASTRAL PROJECT

8:00 – 9:10 pm

Since 1978, Astral Project has been New Orleans’ most exciting, inventive and respected modern jazz group. Featuring Tony Dagradi on saxophones, Steve Masakowski on seven string guitar, James Singleton on bass and John Vidacovich on drums, Astral Project is a co-op band comprised of world-class improvisers, hailed by fans and critics around the world.
These veteran musicians, known as tops on their instruments in jazz-rich New Orleans, each with many album credits as leaders and sidemen, bring a wealth of diverse experience to the bandstand. True to the original spirit of jazz, Astral Project creates real tunes and memorable melodies while giving the musicians freedom to incorporate influences from a multitude of sources. The group shifts direction like a flock of birds in flight with an ease so uncanny it seems to verge on telepathy. It’s the kind of inspired art that can come only from special individuals who have spent decades improvising together.

“ECM-style grace with New Orleans humidity” – Rolling Stone “One of the most distinctive and cohesive groups in jazz.” – Downbeat “A co-op band comprised of world class improvisers and composers… Astral Project has been New Orleans’ best kept secret for more than 20 years.” –

Jazz Times “The city’s premier modern jazz ensemble.” – New Orleans Times Picayune

“The finest modern jazz ensemble in New Orleans, and undoubtedly one of the most unique jazz groups period.” – Offbeat magazine “New Orleans’ greatest contemporary jazz band…a lean tough, rhythmically unyielding approach to improvisation.” – Chicago Tribune “Astral Project epitomizes the modern New Orleans jazz band…successful, independent and synthesizing the present and thick-as gumbo past of the city’s music. “ – capital Times, Madison, WI ”It’s tough to say that a contemporary jazz group is capable of doing just about anything, but in Astral Project’s case, it’s the truth” – Stamford Advocate.

www.astralproject.com

The Big E Brass Band

9:20 – 10:00 pm

We are the Big E Brass Band. A group of high school friends from Slidell High School that have a great passion for music. The band is named after our former band director Mrs. Val Estoque, who inspired to put a band together and helped us grow as musicians. We are inspired by local brass bands in New Orleans, such as Rebirth Brass Band and Hot 8 Brass Band, and try to follow in their footsteps.