The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is an annual US musical highlight. The event celebrates everything good about the Big Easy and to celebrate the Festival’s 50th anniversary the Smithsonian Folkways label will be releasing a huge five-disc box set!
Compiling live recordings taken at Jazz Fests from 1974 to 2016, the set features iconic artists like Trombone Shorty, Irma Thomas, Big Freedia, Professor Longhair, The Neville Brothers, Allen Toussaint (feat. Bonnie Raitt), Dr. John, Kermit Ruffins, Terence Blanchard, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Champion Jack Dupree, Buckwheat Zydeco, and many more!
The focus of the new box set is on the roots of Louisiana music, which comprise the vast majority of the festival’s bookings, from Jazz to Bounce, Zydeco to Gospel, Brass Bands to R&B. Carefully selected from countless hours of live recordings, the box set includes unreleased material spanning the years 1974 to 2016. The music is accompanied by a 135-page book, filled with exclusive photographs drawn from the archives of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, The Historic New Orleans Collection and independent photographers.
