Music

The collaborations of Louis Armstrong the performer and Hoagy Carmichael the songwriter examined through recordings and rare videos as a metaphor for the evolving impact of race on jazz history.

Louis Armstrong has a complicated relationship with religion. His cultural background was Baptist but he was raised in part by a Jewish family and had great reverence for Judaism. He liked to lampoon Preachers in his performances. Yet he was the first jazz musician to record the spiritual “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The presentation will include Armstrong’s own words, music and video clips.

After a 13 year absence, Armstrong returned to Europe in 1948. Roche will discuss and play a few tracks from that show and the show the day after and talk (and play) about a fantastic show with a different All Star Group in Berlin from 1952.

This presentation examines photographic representations of cosplay by early New Orleans jazz musicians seeking to develop new markets in the urban North and West Coast from 1915 into the mid 1920s. The use of stage masquerade and the portrayals of race that often went with it serves as a context for exploring the controversy surrounding Louis Armstrong's masking in blackface as King Zulu in 1949.

Hosted and interviewed by Gwen Thompkins, hear from this all female trumpet panel on what it’s like to be a female trumpeter in New Orleans, who inspires them today, and who influenced them to take this path.

Between 1957 and 1959, Louis Armstrong starred in four televised "Timex All Star Jazz Shows." Join Armstrong historian Ricky Riccardi as he screens the best moments from each special, including Armstrong performing with his All Stars, Jack Teagarden, Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and many more!

Armstrong repeatedly said that his jazz playing was derived from his early quartet experience. We will demonstrate with aural examples various ways in which jazz replicates musical devices of barbershop harmonizers.

In conjunction with David Wright and Vic Hobson’s presentation, Crossroads Quartet will help demonstrate barbershop licks that worked their way into jazz, followed by a performance set.

Louis Armstrong and Ethel Waters, two of the greatest and most versatile performers of the 20th century had much in common. Both raised themselves up from abject poverty, and against all odds, they became peerless performers, universally loved. Their paths rarely crossed and there is no written or anecdotal evidence of a friendship. Nevertheless, their styles complemented each other and in many ways dovetailed. This presentation explores commonalities found in the influences, music, and trajectories of these two immortals.

Michael Decuir presents research regarding the debate regarding the purpose and validity as it relate to the visual, literary and performance arts during the Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, He will juxtapose Langston Hughes's arguments in his essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain," with Armstrong's recording of "West End Blues." The discussion will include the peripheral impact on other period artists and philosophers such as W.E.B. Du Bois ("The Criteria of Negro Art"), George Schuyler ("The Negro Art-Hokum"), and Alain Locke ("Art or Propaganda").

Pictures, music, newspaper articles and family stories of Louis with the Assunto Family. Deano Assunto, son of Dukes of Dixieland founder Frank Assunto, will discuss his family's personal & professional connection to Louis Armstrong, including the band's LP recording with Armstrong (Louie & the Dukes). Deano will also share some of his unseen collection of music & photos through our audio/ visual presentation.

Louis Armstrong was undoubtedly one of the world's great storytellers. Satchmo Summerfest's resident "Satchologist" Ricky Riccardi has combed through hours of rare footage on Armstrong on television to put together a presentation featuring the best clips of Louis talking about New Orleans, music, race, Swiss Kriss and more.

To better understand the musical genius of Louis Armstrong and his divine ability to play angelic notes, trumpeter and author Jim Thornton will discuss a math-based analysis of the 1927 transcriptions of Armstrong's "125 Jazz Breaks." This analysis is intended to illuminate this holy grail of musical wisdom.

This October will mark the 90th birthday of 8-time Grammy winner, NEA Jazz Master and Satchmo Summefest favorite Dan Morgenstern! Two of his disciples, Scott Wenzel and Ricky Riccardi, will pay tribute to Dan's upcoming milestone by focusing on his relationship with Louis Armstrong, playing audio of Louis and Dan together, showing video of Dan speaking about Louis and reading some of Dan's greatest writing on the trumpeter. Expect a personal video greeting from Dan to his New Orleans friends, too!

In 1970, Boston Globe journalist George Frazier wrote what was for him a typically no-nonsense column in anticipation of Louis Armstrong's 70th birthday celebration at the Newport Jazz Festival. In Frazier's estimation, it was a long overdue honor owed Armstrong by the jazz community. He was critical of those who'd dismissed Armstrong as an Uncle Tom and tried to diminish him as a jazz giant. I was a 16-year-old when I read it and already a serious jazz fan, but Frazier's column, "A Long Time In Coming," raised issues that were then hardly mentioned in the daily press or jazz periodicals, and it became a springboard for me to read more widely about this controversial aspect of Armstrong's legacy, particularly in the essays of Invisible Man novelist Ralph Ellison.

Louis Armstrong and other New Orleans musicians are praised for preserving the city’s unique traditions. This focus, however accurate, has downplayed the revolutionary innovations of local musicians. Armstrong credited his childhood teacher Peter Davis with teaching him trumpet techniques, and Louis learned how to read music, play classical compositions, and integrate whatever he heard into jazz. Failing to appreciate a history of black invention, New Orleans is mistakenly imagined as a place where traditions should be preserved rather than a place where innovations should be cultivated. This presentation focuses on Armstrong as a revolutionary, emphasizing the role of education and creative expression.

Grammy-winning artist, composer, and prodigious multi-instrumentalist Nicholas Payton both defies and embraces parallels to the man he cites as "the first pop star." In conversation with musicologist Melissa A. Weber, Payton will discuss Armstrong's enduring influence both on his work and as an architect of American culture and Black American Music.

For his 36th "Video Pops" presentation Ricky Riccardi will close out Satchmo Summerfest's Hitlon Satchmo Legacy Stage by presenting some of the most requested and most popular Armstrong videos he has screened over the past 12 years. See Louis team up with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, sing opera with Robert Merrill, perform an emotional "Black and Blue" in East Berlin and much more!