Singer-songwriter Eric Lindell’s music has a soulful quality that is redolent of New Orleans. But he grew up in Sonoma County, California. “I used to skateboard, and I still surf and all, and we wanted to start a skate-rock band — this is when I was about 15,” he says. ‘It was funny, I had a guitar, and the other guy was a better guitar player than me, so I got demoted to bass. So I played bass. I played a three-string bass for about a year. I just played the top string, you know. And the

Nicholas Payton is one brilliant musician. He plays just about everything on the bandstand very well. He’s best known for his trumpet work but is also a dynamic keyboard player, and even manages to play superbly on both at the same time. In recent years Payton has added another tool to his kit: singing. “When I was around eleven years old I was singing in the Baptist church choir. I used to go to Austerlitz Baptist Church, Uptown. And that’s really where I started singing a lot and developed a

The Show “One Mo’ Time” went from humble beginnings as a homemade New Orleans labor of love with a single scheduled performance to a worldwide theatrical sensation that ran for years. Its creator, New Orleans actor Vernel Bagneris, has loved the idea of putting on a show from way back. “Cousins of mine still laugh at the fact that they used to come over and I’d put on a show for them and play a little accordion and single a little bit with the few chords I knew on a piano and do plays and make

Trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis got a good lesson and lasting influence out of a teenage attempt to hornswoggle a new trombone from older brother Wynton. The lesson and the influence came in the form of a recording by trombone great J.J. Johnson. “Wynton gave me the record and he said, ‘If you learn one of these solos I’ll buy you a new horn.’ And it was, like, late J.J. from, it was called ‘Proof Positive.’ It one of the premier modern jazz trombone records, and there was no possibility. And that

Saxophonist and Astral Project founder Tony Dagradi grew up in Summit, New Jersey. By high school he knew what he wanted to do: play jazz. “It was almost as if I didn’t have a choice,” he says. “I didn’t think about, well, how much money am I going to make or how do I get a gig. I was just — all I wanted to do was play.” After a couple of years at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Dagradi entered an intense period of jazz rehearsal and listening. “That was it for me. When I started

Don Vappie grew up in New Orleans with a yen for music he just couldn’t explain. “My earliest memory, it must have been second grade, I always wanted to be a musician,” Vappie says. “I have no idea why, but that’s what I wanted to do.” Unless it was those records. “I had a Decca record player, you know, the little box you could carry around? And my grandmother gave me a 78. It was ‘A Tisket, A Tasket.’ And on the flip side it was Chick Webb doing ‘Liza (Let the Clouds Roll Away)’ — which was my

National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master Eddie Palmieri is a great pianist, composer and bandleader. However, in his early teens Palmieri developed a yen to play timbales in his piano-playing older brother’s band. “When Tito Puente made the instrument so popular I was a young man, and by 13 I started to play timbales. I wanted to be my brother’s drummer,” Palmieri said. “That didn’t work out; my mother bought me a metal case that weighed more than maybe two or three pairs of timbales, and

Great New Orleans jazz singer Germaine Bazzle’s formal music education began at the Xavier Junior School of Music under the tutelage of the accomplished and very demanding Sister Mary Latitia. “She is the one, when you hear that little sound that I make, she is the one that demonstrated that to the orchestra when we were playing as she wanted something done,” Bazzle explained. “She wanted to show the trumpets or trombones, the brass people, how to do a certain thing. And when I started doing

Great New Orleans trumpeter and vocalist Gregg Stafford spent much of his childhood in the Central City neighborhood. He saw lots of parades, often sang in church, and developed a real love of music. When it came time for high school, Stafford had the chance to join the school band — if his mother approved. So he told her, “I don’t have an elective at the moment, so the band instructor asked me, would I be interested in music? ‘Oh no, no, no, no; I don’t have no money to pay for no horn, so you

Saxophonist Joshua Redman grew up in Berkeley, California, a very high achiever academically who turned to music for fun. “I loved music, and I loved listening to it and I loved playing it, but I wasn’t serious about it. Music was kind of an escape, it was kind of a relief for me from the more rigorous aspects, the more studious aspects, of academics,” Redman says. “That was kind of how I let myself go and have fun.” Redman started clarinet in the fourth grade and switched to tenor sax in the