Jazz residency brings trumpeter Nicholas Payton
Jazz trumpeter Nicholas Payton has been named the Jazz Artist-in-Residence at Tulane University for the 2011-2012 academic year. The residency will help support master classes to high school and university students, and organize concerts and lectures on the music and culture of New Orleans and the Gulf South.
Nicholas Payton will offer a series of community events as the Jazz Artist-in-Residence at Tulane this academic year. (Photo by Rick Olivier)
Payton, a New Orleans native and Grammy-winning recording artist, will offer a series of events open to the public, including a master class on Nov. 16 and a December concert with student performers, music faculty and other professional musicians.
The son of renowned bassist and sousaphonist Walter Payton, Nicholas was an active jazz musician in New Orleans as a child. He attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, where he studied with Clyde Kerr Jr., and the University of New Orleans, where he studied with Ellis Marsalis.
Payton is credited on more than 120 recordings as a composer, arranger, special guest or sideman. He has recorded eight albums under his own name, including Doc Cheatham and Nicholas Payton, which won a Grammy in 1997.
“The jazz residency was created to help generate awareness of our important musical heritage and to create a new generation of passionate musicians and advocates of New Orleans music,” says Rosalind Hinton, senior program manager of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane. “This is a great moment for Tulane's jazz studies program and for Music Rising to bring internationally acclaimed artists to campus to work with students.”
The jazz residency is funded by Music Rising, the award-winning organization founded in 2005 after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Its purpose is to provide aid to professional musicians of the region. Music Rising is administered by the Gibson Foundation.
