I'm walkin' to New Orleans...

Just received an email from the New orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival announcing that "the most important Jazz Fest in history" will be held April 28-30 and May 5-7. Tickets are available at nojazzfest.com.

This year's official poster (at left) features Fats Domino in "Rockin' to New Orleans" by James Michalopoulos.

Press Release
New Orleans, LA (January 31, 2006)—After months of anticipation, organizers of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival today officially confirmed the 2006 dates for the Jazz Fest they say will be the most important in the history of the event. The first post-Katrina Jazz Fest will be held on April 28-30 and May 5-7 at its traditional home, the Fair Grounds Race Course.

Jazz Fest Producer/Director Quint Davis said, “We’re dedicating this year’s Festival to the people of New Orleans and inviting everybody who cares about this city to come to Jazz Fest and play a meaningful role in bringing back the city’s culture, which is the soul of America. Jazz Fest 2006 will be a homecoming party for thousands of New Orleans musicians, Festival chefs and craftspeople, and we want the world to join us in welcoming them back as we present the celebration of a lifetime.”

Sponsorship of this year’s Festival, according to Davis, is one of the major reasons why the Festival is happening as planned. “In light of the great financial challenges of presenting the 2006 Festival on the grand scale everyone is accustomed to, we simply could not have produced Jazz Fest without unprecedented corporate support from Shell, who becomes the Festival’s first-ever Presenting Sponsor.”

The Edge and U2 Offer Aid to New Orleans By SOLVEJ SCHOU, Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES - With a long-held affection for New Orleans, a city he calls "very unique and very special," U2 rocker The Edge felt compelled to try to help it recover from Hurricane Katrina. The result: Music Rising, an organization that provides instruments to musicians blasted by the storm. The city especially took hold of his heart in 2001 after he and the band, while playing there, suffered a tragedy back home. A storage area in Dublin where they kept a lot of instruments was wiped out in a flood.

"Luckily," he recalls, "my main guitars were with us in New Orleans ... the Gibson Explorer that I've had since I was 17-years-old, and the amplifier I've used on every album for every show since we got a record deal." Four years later, after Katrina blew through New Orleans, the memory of that good fortune led him to create Music Rising, along with Gibson Guitar, the Guitar Center Music Education Foundation and the MusicCares Foundation. - complete story