Irvin Mayfield's IClub New Orleans
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Irvin Mayfield
At only 33 years old, Irvin Mayfield represents the continuity of the unfolding Jazz legacy of New Orleans. Winning both a Grammy Award and a Billboard Contemporary Latin Jazz Award, this versatile trumpeter, bandleader, composer, arranger, professor, businessman, cultural ambassador and recording artist is on a mission to position Jazz at the center of American culture. With over 16 recordings, numerous collaborations and four orchestral commissions, Mayfield is one of the most recorded and decorated Jazz musicians of his generation. His latest release, A Love Letter to New Orleans is a richly illustrated Book and CD package that includes songs, essays and reflections on Mayfield’s ten years of recordings on Basin Street Records.
Mayfield currently serves as the Artistic Director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, which he founded in 2002. Under Mayfield’s artistic leadership, NOJO won the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble for Book One, on the World Village/Harmonia Mundi label. Dedicated to strengthening the culture, tradition and industry of Jazz, Mayfield has positioned NOJO into one the world’s most sought after big bands. As a part of the new jazz vanguard, Mayfield composes new music, tours globally and develops creative programs. His brand of jazz is inspired by both the jazz traditions of New Orleans and its democratic pull toward the modern.
In 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Mayfield to a six-year term on the National Council on the Arts, the advisory board of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), where he advises on federal arts policy and funding. As the youngest member and only musician on the NEA board, Mayfield was nominated by President George W. Bush during the end of his term, was renominated by President Barack Obama and was unanimously confirmed by the US Senate. Mayfield also serves as Cultural Ambassador for the City of New Orleans, an appointment recognized by the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Governor of the State of Louisiana and other governmental bodies.
Mayfield’s jazz vision extends to academia where he founded the New Orleans Jazz Institute (NOJI) at the University of New Orleans (UNO) in 2008. As the educational arm of NOJO, NOJI operates a yearlong Saturday Music School where school aged children are provided with applied music instruction. NOJI also oversees the Project Prodigy Summer Camp where students from greater New Orleans receive music instruction. Mayfield also serves as a professor of jazz practice at UNO where he teaches New Orleans as Discourse and Music Inside Out. With a mission to strengthen the economy of jazz, Mayfield recently entered into a historic partnership with the Royal Sonesta Hotel where he launched the Irvin Mayfield Jazz Playhouse, an upscale 7-nights a week live jazz venue that employs over 50 jazz musicians weekly and has successfully brought jazz back to Bourbon Street. Mayfield is launching Irvin Mayfield’s I Club, a new music venue in partnership with the JW Marriott Hotel, scheduled for opening in July 2011.
Mayfield’s creative artistry, innovative programming, audience building and community engagement is in full display at the Minnesota Orchestra where he was appointed Artistic Director of Jazz Programs in 2009. In collaboration with the Minnesota Orchestra, Mayfield premiered the Art of Passion, an orchestral commission performed by Mayfield’s septet and the Minnesota Orchestra. He also curates a jazz series that has featured emerging jazz vocalist Lizz Wright, clarinetist Evan Christopher, a sold-out reunion of Los Hombres Calientes, a holiday performance with Dee Dee Bridgewater and more scheduled in the 2012 season.
In 2008, Mayfield released Love Songs, Ballads & Standards with Ellis Marsalis, an early mentor and patriarch of the Marsalis family. Early in his career, Mayfield co-founded the New Orleans-flavored Latin jazz band Los Hombres Calientes with percussionist Bill Summers, and drummer Jason Marsalis. Their debut CD-Los Hombres Calientes on Basin Street Records won Billboard’s Latin Music Award for Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year. The band, which recorded five albums and toured throughout the US, Europe and the Caribbean, developed a loyal following among jazz, Latin and jam music fans.
A prolific composer, Mayfield’s latest commission, the Elysian Fields Jazz Suite, is a big band composition that explores liberty, family, death, and rebirth. Inspired by Elysian Fields, the historic avenue in New Orleans that connects the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain, as well as the mythological abode of blessed souls. Elysian Fields Avenue was also the street where the body of Mayfield’s father, Irvin Mayfield Sr., was found in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. With several movements the Elysian Fields Jazz Suite also recognizes New Orleans’ historical ties to France and its namesake, the Champs Elysees, the storied boulevard where liberty is honored.
Other notable commissions by Mayfield include All The Saints--a spiritual work commissioned by the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana, that was the first concert held in the city after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2006, Mayfield premiered Rising Tide, a commission from the New Jersey Performing Arts Center that celebrated the indigenous musical culture of New Orleans. In 2003, Mayfield composed Strange Fruit, which explored interracial relationships and featured the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and Dillard University’s Concert Choir. The Half past Autumn Suite, Mayfield’s first commission, is a musical tribute to renowned African-American artist Gordon Parks. The musical score was commissioned by the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2000 and it accompanied an exhibition of the photographer’s work. The score was later recorded with Parks, Wynton Marsalis, and the Irvin Mayfield Quintet, and released on Basin Street Records in 2003.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Mayfield received his first trumpet in the fourth grade. In the jazz tradition, he was mentored by an array of jazz greats including Clyde Kerr Jr. and Ellis Marsalis who instilled in him the cultural and historical importance of New Orleans jazz. He graduated from the famous New Orleans Center of Creative Arts in 1995. After turning down a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music, Mayfield studied at the University of New Orleans Jazz Studies program under the mentorship of Ellis Marsalis. Eager to perform, Mayfield left college in 1997 and formed the Irvin Mayfield Septet.
A passionate advocate for New Orleans, Mayfield is on the Board of the New Orleans Public Library Foundation, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, Tulane University’s School of Architecture, the Youth Rescue Initiative, the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, the Louisiana State University’s Department of Psychiatry and Health Sciences, and Unity of New Orleans. Mayfield presented the first ever Jazz Commencement Address at the 2010 University of New Orleans Commencement exercise, where he was awarded the 2010 Chancellor Award as a distinguished faculty member. Most recently in May 2011, Mayfield was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Dillard University.
Irvin Mayfield’s Discography:
Irvin Mayfield, A Love Letter to New Orleans, Basin Street Records,2011
New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, BOOK ONE, Harmonia Mundi, 2009
Irvin Mayfield and Ellis Marsalis,Love Songs, Ballads & Standards, Basin Street Records, 2008
Higher Ground, Irvin Mayfield performs on compilation benefit CD, Blue Note Records, 2005
Los Hombres Calientes,Volume 5: Carnival 2005, Basin Street Records.
Los Hombres Calientes,Volume 4: Vodou Dance, 2003, Basin Street Records.
Los Hombres Calientes, Volume 3: New Congo Square, 2001, Basin Street Records (Grammy-nominated).
Los Hombres Calientes,Volume 2: Los Hombres Calientes, 1999, Basin Street Records.
Los Hombres Calientes, 1998, Basin Street Records. (Billboard’s Latin Music Award Winner for Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year.)
Higher Groundon Blue Note Records, 2005
Irvin Mayfield and the Dillard University Choir, Strange Fruit, 2005
Irvin Mayfield Quintet, Wynton Marsalis, Half Past Autumn Suite, 2003
Irvin Mayfield Quintet, How Passion Falls, 2001
Jaz Sawyer/Irvin Mayfield20/20: Live at the Blue Note, 2000, Half Note Records
Irvin Mayfield: Irvin Mayfield in 1999,
The Irvin Mayfield Sextet:Live at the Blue Note in 1999.
To learn more about the New Orleans legend behind the I Club, click here.
To learn more about and support the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO), a performing arts institution founded by Irvin Mayfield that is dedicated to presenting engaging and transformative Jazz experiences, click here.
To learn more about New Orleans’ premier authentic jazz club, Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse, click here.