“Cooking is a connection to someone’s soul,” Master Chef Aaron Sanchez explained to Culinary Arts students in their first master class since the launch of NOCCA’s newest discipline in August. Cooking is clearly how Chef Aaron shares his heritage, his passion for life’s flavors, and his dedication to helping young people find their paths.

Mentoring reaches deep into Chef Aaron’s core, a role he learned from Chef Paul Prudhomme when he began an apprenticeship at age 16 with Louisiana’s legendary chef. Today, Sanchez co-stars on The Food Network’s Heat Seekers, Chopped, Chefs vs. City, and The Best Thing I Ever Ate. His restaurants Centrico in New York City and Mestizo in Kansas City earn rave reviews, and he was nominated by the James Beard Foundation as Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2005. His latest book, Simple Food, Big Flavor: Unforgettable Mexican-Inspired Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours, was just released.

In New Orleans in October to unveil his new menu and signature dishes for Crossroads at the House of Blues, Chef Aaron and House of Blues staff offered to come by NOCCA for a cooking demonstration. It was filled with artistry and technique, but also constantly connected to science – a tenet of NOCCA’s new Academic Studio. Students were grilled on seasoning methods, how to cook garlic without turning it bitter, releasing liquid at just the right time, buying spices whole and grinding yourself, toasting spices to wake them up, never boiling spices; and adding fresh herbs last to keep the chlorophyll from oxidating and turning drab.

“It is the difference between good and exceptional,” Chef Aaron urged students.

Culinary Arts centers on “structure, discipline and mentoring; and you have all of that right here,” he told students. “Concentrate on the basics and ask for help.”

“How did you know this was your destiny?” one student asked. “Work with mentors,” Chef Aaron advised in his reply. “See if you like it. Get as much education as you can. You will see cooks try to emulate their mentors, but somewhere along the way, you have to develop your own stamp. And when you do find out who you are, share it.”

Please join us at NOCCA on Thursday, January 12 for the opening reception of the 2012 Visiting Artists Exhibit.  The show features two- and three-dimensional work by Willie Birch, Sesthasak Boonchai, Sally Brogden, and Rajko Radovanovic. The opening reception runs from 6pm to 8pm in the Ken Kirschman Artspace, and the exhibit continues through February 24, 2012.

NOCCA is located at 2800 Chartres Street, in New Orleans’ historic Faubourg Marigny neighborhood. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 9am to 1pm, and Saturday from 12pm to 4 pm. Admission is free.

BIOS

Willie Birch
A native of New Orleans, Willie Birch creates politically incisive yet emotionally sensitive work that addresses issues related to African American culture and survival. Always probing in his work, the artist has addressed New Orleans musical heritage and also the multi-layered experience of African American males. Willie Birch’s work has powerful political, sociological, and spiritual meaning but is wonderfully anchored in the daily life and celebratory rituals and recently even the fauna of the artist’s 7th Ward New Orleans neighborhood.

Sesthasak Boonchai
Sesthasak Boonchai is an artist and educator, whose work runs the gamut from drawing to photography to installation. Throughout his works, Sesthasak’s focus is a meditation on the relationships between humans and the spaces they inhabit. He studies the remnants and histories our detritus. Be it physical, mental, or psychological, he to tries to connect the idiosyncratic links between objects, corners, candies, and pop songs. Sesthasak has taught at NOCCA, Delgado College and the University of New Orleans. His work has been featured in exhibitions at The Mississippi Museum of Art, The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art and Tulane University. He has also had a number of solo exhibitions throughout the United States. Currently he divides his time between New Orleans and New York and is a faculty member at The School of Visual Arts.

Sally Brogden
Sally currently lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she is Professor of Art at the University of Tennessee. She has a BFA and an AB in Art History from the University of Michigan and an MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics. Her work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad. Sally was one of fifty artists selected for the exhibition Taking Measure: American Ceramic Art at the New Millennium, curated for the world ceramics conference in Yeoju, Korea. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and has been an artist in residence at the Ceramic Center Berlin and the Archie Bray Foundation, where she now serves on the Board of Directors. Her work has been included in numerous books and catalogs including: Ceramics: A Potter’s Handbook, The Craft and Art of Clay, A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray Influence, Taking Measure: American Ceramic Art at the New Millennium and 500 Ceramic Sculptures. Recent exhibitions include: Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY; Holter Museum, Helena, MT; Ceramic Center Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Santa Fe Clay, Santa Fe, NM; Vertigo Gallery, Denver, CO; Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR; Maryland Arts Council, Baltimore, MD; Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA; Belger Art District, Kansas City, MO; and the Ichon World Ceramic Center, Kyonggii Province, Korea.

Rajko Radovanovic
Rajko was born in 1954 in Yugoslavia and has lived and made art in New Orleans since 2009. He has previously held residence in Brighton, Manchester, and London (United Kingdom), and Zagreb (Croatia). His work has been represented in well over 150 exhibitions including shows in the UK, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Italy, Poland, and the USA. The work itself ranges across media including video, performance, installation, photography, painting, sculpture and artist’s publications. After the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of Soviet Union, and the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, Rajko used his work to explore the mechanisms of individual and collective traumas within transitional, post-socialist societies. This resulted in a series of work which explored people’s moral standards and their requisite modification which allowed universal acceptance of violence towards their fellow citizens.

“What would you change in history if you could?” asked a student of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns. “I would stop the assassination of Abraham Lincoln,” he answered. “I am curious as to what Lincoln’s emphasis on our better angels after the Civil War… what might have happened.”

Burn’s answer was central to the hour-long master class he led with Media Arts, Jazz and Academic Studio students at NOCCA in October. “Who are we is the question that has animated my life’s work.”

His life’s work has earned him seven Emmy’s and two Oscar nominations for renowned documentaries that include The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Lewis & Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery (1997), Jazz (2001), Mark Twain (2001), The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011); and upcoming films on Jackie Robinson, The Roosevelts and Vietnam.

In answering another student, Burns was able to show NOCCA’s young artists how stories and biographies are interconnected. “What drew you to jazz?” a jazz student wanted to know. “After The Civil War and Baseball, I realized I was working on a trilogy,” Burns explained.

“The Civil War was hugely important. Everything before let up to it, everything after is the result. The game of baseball was an entre into social life and race. And the period music was all jazz. Jazz was created out of circumstances not conducive to art. It was born of a community with a memory of being unfree in a free land. It is the timeless affirmation even in tough times.”

“Tell a good story,” he said simply, “and everything comes in its wake.” To tell a good story, the director offered insights into his pioneering techniques: using a chorus of voices and narrators, performing period music on period instruments, forsaking storyboarding, shooting on film, not being seduced by all of the good stuff on the editing room floor, and keeping an open script process so he can constantly add and subtract information and happy coincidences.

And, of course he spoke of his pan and zoom process. “You start at the bottom of a picture that shows two gun holsters… and slowly pan up to a child’s face. It all goes back to telling a story.”

Burns’ own story as a filmmaker began when he was 12. How a movie could make his father cry after his mother’s death helped him understand the power of art. He went on to study filmmaking at Hampshire College under photographer Jerome Liebling. “If I hadn’t met him,” Burns answered a student’s question about his mentors, “you would not be meeting me.”

“Filmmaking is not easy and nothing will be handed to you. It is 12 – 14 hours work a day, six to seven days a week. We will work years on a film: 10 years on The National Parks, five and one half on The Civil War, six on Jazz. You have to know who you are. The key to success is being honest and working hard.”

“Great men do great things,” he offered to NOCCA’s young artists, “but they are not the only stories. I’ve found out there’s no such thing as ordinary people.”

“Where in your body do you think your voice is coming from?” soprano and NOCCA alumnus Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet asked a young vocal student who had just sung for her. The student looked unsure. “Your voice is not being supported by breath but by the tension in your throat.”

Similarly for the next student Jeanne-Michèle asked, “Where, class, does she go when she’s in trouble? You get the sense that her sound is coming from her jaw rather than the resonators, from high in the face.”

“Learning to control exhalation while still involuntarily inhaling is one of the hardest skills vocalists tackle,” says Vocal Chair Phyllis Treigle. Jeanne-Michèle gave students several specific techniques they could call upon to grow as young singers.

The first involved raising and lowering arms against tension to open the rib cage. “The rib cage is like wings,” Jeanne-Michèle explained. “You want to feel it as a loose, flexible object. You want to feel like flying when you are singing. As you get stronger, the act of opening the rib cage will make you use more breath.”

She also showed them how to develop a natural but powerful posture by elongating the neck via the Alexander technique and relaxing the shoulders. Finally she showed them how to strengthen the diaphragm muscle and eliminate jaw tension by raising the teeth instead of dropping the jaw. “We want the sound to go up into that space high in the face. Tension energy costs you without getting anything back.”

“When I sing,” the soprano explained, “it is me against 110 people in the orchestra for up to five hours. Singing is hard work, it is an athletic sport. You have to learn to have the right amount of energy and air for each phrase.”

Jeanne-Michele’s career has taken her from New Orleans to stages world-wide where she is renowned for her role as Isolde. Having commenced her career in Italian opera, she has more recently become recognized as a leading force in German and contemporary music repertoire. Her 2012 schedule begins in Glasgow, Scotland and continues through Dallas, Texas; Frankfort, Germany; Toulouse, France; Salzburg, Austria; ending in Dijon, France.

“That is something you have to think about when choosing a performance career. You have to love travel, handle being alone a lot, be able to take care of yourself, be away from family. It is not a simple choice. It works for some and not for others. You have to have a firm sense of who you are,” she advised young artists just embarking on career choices.

“In singing, there is no finishing point. It is about the journey. Whenever you figure one thing out, something else changes.”

“But if you have good breath, you can do anything!”

“Let’s get this out of our heads right now. They are not doing you a favor at an audition, you are sharing what you can do. It is your audition,” alumnus Wendell Pierce emphasized to drama and musical theatre students heading to the Chicago Unified Auditions in February. “If you are nervous, that is exactly where you need to be. It is a step of courage that you are making. Don’t let anyone rush your audition.”

The Chicago Unified Auditions are a phenomenal opportunity for drama students from around the country to audition for up to 25 college and conservatory programs all in one place. In-person auditions are required for most programs, particularly for students applying for scholarships.

Wendell’s schedule as an actor (HBO’s Treme) and as a community leader (revitalizing his boyhood neighborhood of Pontchartrain Park devastated when the levees broke following Hurricane Katrina) is challenging to say the least. Yet he spent extensive time – as technician, tactician and inspirational voice – with every NOCCA senior making the trip to Chicago.

“There’s the craft and there’s the business and the two rarely meet. Employment doesn’t define you. Nor does it mean you are good. You have to be able to know your own inadequacies and when your work is hurting. You have to stay grounded because no matter how successful you are there’s always rejection. Your relationship is always with your craft. Some of my greatest performances were in auditions.”

As he gave them insight into the audition process, he also worked to help students know how to refine their craft. “What do I do with a broken metered line and just one word to start a speech?”, he asked one student to consider. At the same time he congratulated her, “Clarity and action ride on the verb. You are great at hitting the verbs.”

His dominant theme, however, was inspiring students to be investigative. “Research is about trying to find something that’s hot for you. It may or may not take hold, but sometimes it might surprise you. Craft is creating a world so strong that it induces behavior.”

So, to Level III drama student Anamarys who was performing a monologue from Hatful of Rain, Wendell asked, “You have chosen to tell him something important at this time. Why? Your character’s husband is addicted. Are you imagining him sober now or strung out? What is the hotter choice for you? That is feeding fuel to the fire.”

To Level I drama student Curtis who was performing a monologue from Jitney Wendell asked, “Do you know how long your character has been incarcerated? Otherwise you’re leaving fuel on the table.”

To Level III drama student Peyton who was performing a monologue from Phaedra, Wendell asked, “You’re saying to the man you love, ‘Kill me. ‘That is not a light thing. Why? What are the ramifications of a woman who is willing to die and leave her children. That’s fuel to the fire.”

“Investigate,” Wendell urged students. “What is more interesting to you? Where’s the fire? Have you done your speech in the opposite way of how you think it should go? You might discover something you can add to the mix. It might give you more to play. If you have been working for this, be there in full.”

NOCCA’s “On the Edge” gallery series presents a Visiting Artist exhibition
January 20 – February 25, 2011
Opening reception: January 20, 6pm – 8pm

The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and The NOCCA Institute are proud to announce the 2011 Visiting Artist Exhibition. The opening reception for this show will be held in NOCCA’s Ken Kirschman Artspace on Thursday, January 20, 2011, from 6pm to 8 pm, and the exhibition will continue through February 25, 2011. The exhibition will feature two- and three-dimensional work in a variety of media by Kathleen Loe, Shawne Major, Gary Reggio, Joséphine  Sacabo, and Elijah Sproles.

Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 12pm to 5 pm, and Saturdays from 12pm to 3 pm. Admission is free, and the public is encouraged to attend.

Bios

Kathleen Loe
Kathleen Loe is a multimedia artist and independent art writer. She has been a Visiting Critic at Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, and Louisiana State University and was the Director of Painting and Critical Studies for the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado for nine years. Kathleen writes critical essays for artists’ exhibitions and was editor and contributing writer for Alchemy of Light, Mary Conover, a monograph released in January of 2010 at Art Basil, Miami. She has taught both studio and art history on the faculties of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois Wesleyan University, and Bloomfield College. Her paintings, drawings, and prints have been nationally exhibited at galleries in New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, Aspen, and New Orleans, as well as at the Jersey City Museum, the Aspen Museum, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Laguna Gloria Museum in Austin, Texas, and the Frederick R. Weisman Museum in Malibu, California. Kathleen is represented by Gallery Bienvenu in New Orleans and David Floria Gallery in Aspen.

Shawne Major
Shawne Major has been making found object assemblage “tapestries” for over 15 years. Major’s exciting post-pop, found-object assemblage works were exhibited in the Prospect.1 New Orleans Biennial in 2008, and she has received grant awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Joan Mitchell Foundation. Major is represented by Heriard Cimino Gallery in New Orleans and Irvine Contemporary in Washington, DC. “I am interested in how the perception of reality is colored by dreams, memory, superstition, religion, bias, prejudice, and fear. My mixed media work refers to the overlay of belief systems created by the individual to piece together their personal paradigm.”

Gary Reggio
Gary Reggio is a graphic designer with over twenty years of experience (five of those years were pretty good). He has a bachelors of philosophy from the University of New Orleans and a Certification in Media Arts from Tulane’s University College. Clients have included French Quarter Festival, Satchmo SummerFest, Greek Festival New Orleans, Christmas New Orleans Style, La Divina Gelateria, Zea Restaurant, Semolina Restaurant, Shell Oil, Al Copeland Enterprises, and many others.

Joséphine Sacabo
Joséphine Sacabo is an internationally acclaimed photographer whose work has been seen in one-person exhibitions in Paris, London, Madrid, Toulouse, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other major U.S. cities. Her work has also been widely published in magazines in the United States and Europe. Portfolios of her work have recently appeared in The London Sunday Times Magazine Camera Arts, B&W Magazine, Rangefinder Magazine and ZOOM among others. She has had four books of her work published: Une Femme Habitée in Paris in 1991 by Editions Marval, award winning  Pedro Paramo in 2002 by the University of Texas Press,  Cante Jondo in 2002 by 21st Publishing and Duino Elegie in 2005 also by 21st Publishing. She is represented by Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, A Gallery for Fine Photography in New Orleans, John Stevenson Gallery in New York, Stephen L. Clark Gallery in Austin, and Verve Fine Arts Gallery in Santa Fé. Her work has been collected by the Whitney Museum of American Art- N.Y., The Museum of Modern Art- N.Y., The Art Institute of Chicago, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, The Smithsonian- Washington D.C., The Library of Congress, The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Wittliff Collection- Austin, The Bibliothèque Nationale- Paris, and La Maison de la Photo- Paris, among others. Joséphine Sacabo has taught highly acclaimed workshops at the Center for Photography at Woodstock and at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France, and at the Santa Fé Workshops. Her work is characterized by highly subjective, introspective images that hover between reality and dream, often inspired by literary texts.

Elijah Sproles
Elijah Sproles is a metal sculptor living in New Orleans. He graduated from Tulane University and received his M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He has conducted metal casting workshops throughout the United States and in the U.K., created several Public Art sculptures, and has exhibited his work around the country.

“Music is not a competitive thing. You must be constantly trying to help each other,” renowned Jazz drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts impressed upon jazz music students from NOCCA, Loyola, UNO and Tulane University.

They had all come to NOCCA for Watt’s master class put together by The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at Loyola University. One of the most in demand drummers of his generation, Watt’s lessons for students were as complex and elegant as his music.

Initially majoring in classical percussion at Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University, Jeff enrolled at Berklee School of Music where he began studying jazz with fellow students such as Branford Marsalis and Kevin Eubanks. Since then, he has appeared on every Grammy Award-winning record by both Branford and Wynton Marsalis. He has toured and worked with the Marsalis brothers, George Benson, Harry Connick, Jr., McCoy Tyner, Danilo Perez, Betty Carter, and Kenny Kirkland among so many more.

To the class he brought his explosive power, blinding speed and mastery of complex rhythms and time signatures. He demonstrated his incomparable technique, inventiveness and grace. Very familiar with his work, students asked numerous questions about different recordings and licks. He explained how he might play the drums like a piano, how important the drums and piano are to adding or taking away texture, to letting music breath or to filling it up.

Mostly, though, he helped students focus on what is most essential to being an accomplished musician: optimizing every situation and helping each other. “Whether you are playing a solo, with a trio or with an orchestra, you have the same criteria – to make good music. Treat every time you play as a performance. That is what you are striving for.”

“You know, musicians can perform live music without truly aspiring to play with each other,” Watts told students as he tried to shape how important it is to be emotionally and aesthetically invested in each other’s playing. “You’ll have good days, bad days, alright days. But it’s those ‘bam!’ days that keep you going, when you touch some of that magic. That’s why you practice your craft and help other musicians – so you can be in position for those magic moments. You never know when they will come but they reaffirm why you are playing.”

“An actor’s job is to excite, surprise, make one feel,” Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress Blythe Danner honed in on as she critiqued the monologues of 12th grade Drama and Musical Theatre students preparing for college auditions.

On her third visit to NOCCA, Blythe again gave students a primer on acting, breaking down what worked in each student’s performance and helping them discover ways to take the character further.

She prodded, she urged, she pulled emotions out of students as they intensely focused on the every word from the master artist. With great care and honesty, she helped them understand the hard work, generosity and courage required of acting.

To one young actress performing a soliloquy from The Importance of Being Earnest, Blythe suggested, “it is always good to put something in your way, as an obstruction, to give you something more to get across.”

To another actress telling her love she plans to marry another, Blythe explained, “you’ve got to let it rip you apart. You were brave enough to come to him on the day of your marriage, but what you are doing is frightening, correct? I want to see that conflict in your body language.”

To an actor working on a monologue from The Glass Menagerie, “Tennessee Williams knew how to combine humor and heartache. Your mother in this scene doesn’t understand what you are saying. Torture her with what you’re going to do now. Get to her in non-linear ways. Have fun with your anger. You might not end up performing it this way but it will help you discover the character.

How do you start to develop a character was one of the many questions students asked. “If you go through the script and make every other character a part of you,” Blythe offered, “you will always have some empathy, even for people you hate. Having an understanding of all the things other characters are going through helps you develop your own emotions.”

“As a young person, it can be hard to find an experience in my own life to connect to what a character is going through. What can I do then?” asked another student. “You just have to find a substitution to get that emotion going, though certain roles without real life experiences are too difficult.”

“Should you choose roles by whether they are character-driven or leading?” asked young another actor. “You should be open to everything. Don’t limit yourself. Whatever comes your way, take it because you’ll learn something from it.”

“Acting is reacting. Surprise one another when you are working on scenes together. Do something different today from what you did today. The best actors I’ve worked with threw the ball from a different direction each night.” To answer a student’s question as to her most fundamental goal, “I want to let the play wash over me and take everyone in the audience with me.” She took every student to a deeper understanding of their craft that day.

Musical Theatre and Drama students could not have asked for a more experienced practitioner in their field with which to work than Jeff Passero. The New York City resident is renowned as a casting director, technique teacher for both acting and auditioning, producer, director, actor and singer on stage, in film and in television. Over the course of an afternoon, he ran students through their paces. And he started at the beginning.

He first gave them self-confidence. “When you say your name, it is the first representation of who you are,” Jeff offered to one of the first students up. “Every time you take a step back, as you just did, it means you are equivocating. That you’re not sure you want to be here.”

He then helped them express their character’s physicality. “This is called sitting,” he demonstrated for the next student who had performed stiffly in one place. He shifted his weight from one leg to another. “If your feet are not nailed to the floor, it gives you life.”

And he had each and every student focus on to whom they were singing or speaking and why. “Did you have a personalization in your mind of who you are talking to?” Jeff asked a student who just performed a monologue from Jitney. “Very fine work. You had a point of view and it was full. But I would have liked to see you challenge the person to whom you were speaking. I was yearning to feel your power. Play the intention with strength so you don’t come off as a victim.”

“There’s a triad to life on the stage. You have to have an objective: what do you want. You have to have an emotional justification: why do you want it. And you have to have intention: how are you going to go about getting what you want. As Stella Adler taught, don’t speak until it feels truthful.”

And he made each student feel comfortable enough to find the truth in their performances. “Remember, there are no mistakes,” he told students. “There are only lessons to be learned.”

NOCCA hosts four new arrivals at fall 2010 Creative Readings Series
October 20 * NOCCA’s Ken Kirschman Artspace * 2800 Chartres * 7pm

New Orleans has always attracted writers and artists, and in the past few years, the city has seen another wave of literary newcomers.  That got us thinking: why?  We’re curious about what New Orleans has to offer them as writers and vice versa.  On Wednesday October 20^th at 7:00, in NOCCA’s Ken Kirschman Artspace, the Creative Writing Department will showcase four poets who are relatively new to town: Nik De Dominic, Paul Killebrew, Sara Slaughter, and Jeremy JF Thompson. We look forward to hearing their work and thoughts about their new home.

This event is free, and the public is encouraged to attend. A reception with the authors will follow.

BIOS

Nik De Dominic moved to New Orleans in May, 2009. Pushcart nominated, his work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Harpur Palate, Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere.  He is an editor of The Offending Adam and an associate editor of the New Orleans Review. As a visiting instructor for Bard College, he teaches classes on thinking and writing inside Orleans Parish Prison.

Paul Killebrew was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. His first full-length collection, Flowers, was published by Canarium Books this year, and his long poem Inspector vs. Evader has recently been republished online by Ugly Duckling Presse. He moved to New Orleans in 2008 to take a job as a staff attorney with Innocence Project New Orleans, an nonprofit law office in the Bywater that represents innocent prisoners in Louisiana and Southern Mississippi who are sentenced to life without parole.

Sara Slaughter is a native of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who moved to New Orleans in the summer of 2009. She is currently enrolled in the low-residency MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.  Her work has appeared in Helicon, The Honeyland Review, and a collection celebrating what would have been the 100^th birthday of Elizabeth Bishop.

Jeremy JF Thompson was born in Los Angeles, CA. He went to college at UCSB in Santa Barbara, CA. He went to Grad School at Mills College in Oakland, CA. Shortly after, he moved to Queens, NY, where he was an instructor at The Center for Book Arts. His book, AUTOGRAPHOGRAPHY, will be out in 2011 through Cuneiform Press. He runs Auto Types Press and blogs at autotypist.blogspot.com.

“Tell me what you liked,” Dr. Marcia Porter said to the young vocal student who had just performed.  “Well, I liked the acting,” she replied.

“That’s all?  I’ll tell you what I liked” said Dr. Porter.  “I liked the through line, the German diction was really good, and yes, I liked the acting or what we call character.”

“When you are analyzing your work, go with what you liked first.  That will encourage you. There will always be 101 things you didn’t like and two things you did.  But give yourself something positive to build on.”

Dr. Porter, who is Assistant Professor of Voice at Florida State University, has built a career on international concert, recital and opera stages since graduating first from NOCCA, then Northwestern University (BA and MA) and the University of Michigan (where she earned her doctorate in voice and studied with famed Metropolitan Opera singer Shirley Verrett).

In her solo career, she has presented premier performances of Elegy for a Great Person (European premier), Paul Laurence Dunbar: Common Ground (Dayton Opera), and The Widow’s Lantern (Pensacola Opera). Other roles have included Mrs. Hayes (Susannah), Pamina (The Magic Flute), Princess Elisa (Paganini), Lucy (Treemonisha), and Mimi (La Bohème). She has also recorded works for soprano and orchestra by Antonio Rosetti for the German record label Classic Produktion Osnabrück scheduled for release in 2010.

But it was in her role as inspirational master artist that she worked with NOCCA vocal music students over a three-day workshop, covering a range of techniques from breathing, posture, relaxation, projection, and understanding the emotion and meaning of their songs.

“Your jaw is shaking when you sing,” she pointed out to one young tenor.  “You’re making this face,” she asked, “because you’ve heard this before, right?”  The young man answered yes.

“Your neck comes out as you take a breath, then goes back in afterwards.  Have you noticed this?” she asked another young soprano.  To help her solve this, Dr. Porter had the vocalist stand with her back and head against a door.  “Now sing with your head constantly touching the door.”

“Schumann did not intend for the middle to move so slow.  Let’s try again and move the middle, cook with gas,” she implored another young soprano.

“As singers we have to be comfortable taking up space,” she expressed to a soprano who stood tensely while singing.  “Take a step out for balance.  If you’re taking up time and space, you might as well make it interesting.”

“I like to watch sports players.  You know how they get their game faces on,” she explained to a tenor who was struggling with telling the story of his song.  “Their faces tell me where they want to go.  I want to see in your face where you want to go.  You want to see the end of the phrase.”

But she returned again and again to the students’ goals.  “If you are going to audition for college, you have to show us that you know what you are singing about, we won’t pull it out of you.

“And you want to start thinking about your grades, ACT and SAT scores now.  Don’t get senioritis.  Focus hard as freshman.  You might pass a college music program’s audition but not get into the university because you didn’t meet its grade standards.  It is one of the most disappointing things to me as a professor to see a talented singer kept out because of grades.  So work hard!”

It was as if Drama, Musical Theatre, Theatre Design and Media Arts students had five living textbooks in front of them, so deep was the information the actors and writers from HBO’s New Orleans production of Treme could offer. Joining in the workshop were actor and NOCCA alumnus Wendell Pierce, writer and NOCCA alumnus Lolis Eric Elie, and actors Clark Peters, Ntare Guma Mbatto Mwine and John Goodman.

“How do you develop your character for film versus television or stage?” asked a drama student of Clark Peters who has appeared on Broadway (The Iceman Cometh, Chicago), West End in London (Blues in the Night, Porgy and Bess, The Witches of Eastwick and Chicago), film (Notting Hill, Freedomland) and on television as Detective Lester Freamon in The Wire. “Film can see what’s on your mind before you utter your first word so your thought process and prelude in your body has to begin before you speak,” he answered. “With a stage play, you can see the beginning, middle and end for your character. For episodic TV you have no idea. On Treme, I’m learning as I go, yet I have to carry this as if this has been my life for the last 40 years.”

Echoed John Goodman, “specify in your mind the person you are playing. Get the song going before you start to speak and then have fun.”

The class started off on a potentially nervous note for seniors who delivered monologues for critique. “The top of this monologue should fire you,” Wendell Pierce told Hakeem Holmes as he performed Booster from August Wilson’s Jitney (a play produced and performed by Wendell). “You have to find what fuels your fire. How do you feel about a father you haven’t spoken to in 20 years? What in your own life have you brought to this? We are students of human behavior. That’s what we are as actors. You have to remember, though, that we are not just dealing with a skill. We are dealing with hearts and minds and souls and you have to tread carefully.” Added Mr. Peters, “Somehow with your words and actions you have to say your lines so strongly that we feel your father is here,” even though it is a monologue.

“The fact that you could overcome nerves and speak is commendable,” Ntare Mwine encouraged the young performers. “Sometimes there are opportunities to use those nerves to help you in presenting your character. Rather than thinking of something as an obstacle, it can be thought of as an asset.” Ntare, an American-Ugandan stage and film actor, playwright, photographer, documentarian and lecturer at USC earned his masters at NYU and also studied at UVA, Moscow Arts Theatre and the Royal National Theatre in London. His photography has been exhibited at the United Nations and museums worldwide; his acting credits include Blood Diamond on film, Heroes on television, and Six Degrees of Separation on stage.

Lolis Eric Elie, who delineated his journey to writer on Treme from his days at NOCCA in the jazz department through business school, UVA’s masters writing program, as a columnist for the Times-Picayune, author (Smokestack Lighting Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country) and documentarian (Faubourg Treme: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans), described the process of script development from collaborative brainstorming to individual effort returning to a collaborative process with the producers to bring unity to the whole. “My scenes may be returned to me with total changes but it is part of the evolution of the story.”

The master artists also touched on the evolving industry. “Now, you all can create,” explained Ntare. “You are empowered because you all have tools right in your hands – your phones, computers, video cameras. You can upload anything and have it seen. We are in the middle of radical transformation. There is really no excuse for you to not jump in. If you’re waiting on someone else, you will be waiting a long time.” “Yet,” added Clark, “somehow we have to hold on to the art and craft of what we do.”

“And you have to find those things that will fire you up,” Wendell returned to again and again. “Don’t just do research on a character for the sake of research, do it to learn, to say wow, that’s cool, I didn’t know that. As a young actor, expand your world. Go everywhere to stake your claim.”

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On Friday, March 5, at 8:00pm, legendary composer, conductor, and saxophonist Phil Woods comes to NOCCA!  The NEA Jazz Master will present one of his master works, The Children’s Suite, performed by Mr. Woods and a 15-piece orchestra. Based on the classic verses of A. A. Milne, The Children’s Suite also features jazz vocals by Vicki Doney and Bob Dorough. This event is hosted by the CAC, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, and The NOCCA Institute. Tickets are $25 general admission and $20 for CAC members, NOCCA Institute members, and Friends of the Fest. Click here to purchase your tickets today.

About The Children’s Suite

“This is an enchanting jazz suite with songs, inspired by the stories of A.A. Milne. Woods got the idea to set some of them as songs in 1961 when he was unpacking his own children’s Milne books after one of many family moves. He eventually wrote 15 of them and much later arranged them into this suite.

However, getting clearance to perform the pieces with a narrator, orchestra and singers, or to record them, was steadfastly barred by the Milne estate and Disney, owners of the rights. Forty years after writing the songs Woods ran into the one person licensed by the Pooh Trustees and Disney to perform Milne’s works on stage, and this person – Peter Dennis (who died in 2009) – finally made it possible for Woods to be allowed to perform and record his music.

The selections are a delight, beautifully capturing the simple appeal of Milne’s childs’ world. The vocals by Boney and Dorough are also a kick; Bob is of course just right for this task based on his popularity with all the boomers who grew up on his Multiplication Rock songs on PBS. Never mind that he’s now hit his eighth decade – his distinctive insouciant Arkansas voice takes us back to a swinging childhood.”

– excerpt from John Henry’s Audiophile Audition review

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“How long have you been playing this piece?” Midori asked students as they finished a Haydn piano trio. As part of her Orchestra Residencies Program work with the Louisiana Philharmonic and Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestras, the renowned violinist and educator had come to NOCCA to offer some hands-on guidance to our classical instrumentalists — particularly on chamber music pieces.

After hearing that they had been playing the piece for a while, she said, “You listen to each other very well, but do you listen as a unit? How does the blending of three very different instruments work?” She helped students understand their responsibility to convey the character of a piece, and she urged them to examine each sequence closely for clues left by the composer: “Why did Haydn put that change there? He didn’t have to. What does it add to the character?”

She encouraged students to bring out the emotion of the works they play. “What kind of entrance would you like to make. Is it with more energy or less? Happier or lighter? Grand or discreet? It is up to you, but something has to happen.”

As she worked with NOCCA’s developing artists on their analytical processes, she wanted to make sure they always looked at the whole composition and performance. “As a group, be sure you are pacing correctly. We have limitations with our instruments, and can only play so loud or so softly. We need to think both forward and backwards as we play music.”

Though the cold weather during Midori’s visit forced a cancellation of a planned community engagement project, her work to provide access to music of every variety should inspire young artists everywhere. Among her personal initiatives are Midori and Friends, founded in 1992 to provide music education and concerts to public school students in New York City; Music Sharing, launched in Japan; Instrumental Instruction for the Disabled Program; Partners in Performance, to broaden audiences for chamber music; and the Orchestra Residencies Program, launched in 2004-05. Midori has offered master classes to young violinists all over the world and currently holds the Jascha Heifetz Chair at USC’s Thorton School of Music. She is the winner of the Avery Fisher Prize and the Suntory Music Award. She made her concert debut at the New York Philharmonic at the age of 11 under the direction of Zubin Mehta.

“Music has to reach out,” she told students. “It goes past the wall of the concert hall. Music cannot be contained.”

Students were hard pressed to decide which part of a career-inspiring afternoon they enjoyed more: Yo-Yo Ma’s rehearsal with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra or the time he spent with them afterward answering questions. His joy, his body, his bow, his cello were as one as he and the orchestra moved through Schumann’s Cello Concerto.

On the one hand, wrote Classical Instrumental student Eva Friehberg, “I was affected greatly by Yo-Yo Ma’s rehearsal with the LPO and I’m grateful that I was given the chance to watch him play as well as watch him work with the orchestra. I have never seen someone play with as much intensity and grace on the cello. It impressed me how Yo-Yo Ma could hear all the different parts of the orchestra and could communicate specifically to certain sections and certain players what he wanted and what he felt could change.”

On the other hand, wrote classical pianist Sarah Palmer, “I was really awestruck the entire time, but the best part was when he came down from the stage to talk to the NOCCA and GNOYO kids. He was so kind and attentive and answered our questions with such humor and sincerity.”

The students took to heart everything he had to say. He asked them their critique of the performance, subtly addressing the connection between performer and audience. “If I am playing the most beautiful music in the world and you as an audience don’t get it…. What is important is how you feel about something and how you communicate it.”

“I get nervous,” one student said, “do you get nervous?”

“You have to know what kind of nerves you have,” the renowned cellist replied. “I have nerves because I don’t want to mess up. Yet, if you are going for technique and that’s your only goal, you will be nervous. What’s hard is what is expressive. Breathing slowing – 6 – 10 breaths – helps. But when you perform you have to get beyond people judging you.”

“When you are performing,” Yo-Yo Ma added, “you are telling a story and you have to own it. It’s about sharing.”

He helped students understand how to break down a problem into smaller parts. Most importantly he helped them move forward as musicians and young people. “How do you keep yourself motivated when doing something you don’t want to do,” the last student asked. “The hardest thing to do is going from something you have to do to something you want to do. Only you know where that switch is. But once you get inside something it gets easier. Ever notice how time flies when you truly get inside something. Find that one part you love, the melody, harmonic time, or simply one note” and use that to move ahead.

The two hour rehearsal will live on. “I can only hope that some day,” student Melinda Davis expressed, “I might be as invigorated and passionate about what I do as Yo-Yo Ma is.”

As set and costume designer for the World War II Museum’s Stage Door Canteen, New York City-based Court Watson laid out set design after set design for NOCCA’s Theatre Design students. With credits including Jekyll & Hyde and West Side Story (Magdeburg, Germany), Frau Luna (Salzburger Landestheater), Rockville and Elton John’s AIDA the Musical (Amstetten, Austria), and Little Shop of Horrors and A Christmas Carol (Ford’s Theatre), the graduate of the Virginia Governor’s High School for the Arts and NYU began with technique. In short order, using his work as illustration, he had covered forced perspective, drafting, pin elevation, sketches, models, visible on-stage lighting, interior lighting, cross sections, revolving walls, negative images as drops, floating set pieces, research and costume design.

“There’s a moment of practicality to set design,” Watson emphasized to students. “If you as a set designer do not have a place to store set pieces during a show, it’s your fault. You have to be able to express why you think something will work. You have to know how much it will cost and how much time it will take to build and operate. You can’t just take the director down a prim rose path. The staging has to work to tell the story.”

The design of the World War II Museum’s Stage Canteen set gave Watson the chance to open students’ eyes to how life, politics and fashion all intersect at design. “The man in the first row will see an actress with a seam down the back of her leg and will remember the first time he danced with his wife. No one can teach you that. You learn to honor people’s feelings.”

Responding to a question, Watson spoke directly, “You will be asked to do something you don’t love but you have to figure out a way to do it. The best design work makes the audience feel something. It is not about beauty or ugliness. We’re storytellers, that’s what we do and if the story is within you, the job is easy.”

“One of my favorite questions is ‘What if?” Juilliard’s Artistic Director of Jazz Studies Carl Allen shared with NOCCA’s Jazz students during a recent master class.

“What if I did this instead of that?  Where is the balance between volume and intensity?” he probed as he tried to help students who had just performed for him understand a challenge young musicians invariably face.  He asked them if they had ever noticed that a player can tend to play louder the longer into a solo he gets as a way to increase intensity.  “But volume is not intensity. Can you find another way?”

“I have another question for you.  What is your role and function in the band?”  “To listen”, answered a student.  “To prioritize your listening,” Mr. Allen refined.  “Know who to listen to first and listen to yourself last. If we listen more, what happens, we speak less.  If we listen more, we play less.  If you are getting louder and louder, are you sure you were listening?”

“We are here to communicate and to give the soloist what he needs to be comfortable.  Each soloist is their own painter, give them their own canvas, don’t make them paint with someone else’s palette.”

“If we take care of the person next to us, we will all be taken care of; that is true on and off the bandstand,” said Mr. Allen as he, like so many master artists, left students with lessons on art and life.

“I like my main characters to be hugely flawed,” acclaimed author and columnist Sarah Vowell told NOCCA Creative Writing students and guest students from Lusher Charter School on a recent visit. “The truth is so rich” she explained as she shared with students the great disconnects she finds all around her, whether in people or events.

A student began the class by asking Sarah how she got into history writing. The story that changed her life was a drive she and her twin sister took retracing the Trail of Tears. One minute they might be stopping at the gravesite of Cherokee Chief who died as a result of the government’s forced relocation of the tribe from North Carolina to Oklahoma; the next listening to Chuck Berry singing about how glad he was “to be livin’ in the USA”. She wondered which country is true?

As she has worked her way through succeeding books – including The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Assassination Vacation, and The Wordy Shipmates – examining contradictions and the improbable remain Vowell’s central themes. For instance, she realized that Todd Lincoln was connected to the first three presidential assassinations. Hawaii’s royal leaders abolished the island’s religion just weeks before New England missionaries turned up. On his return to the United States 50 years after the revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette picked up a child at a parade and put him on his shoulders; that six-year-old was Walt Whitman. “In fiction, this would sound stupid. Good fiction has to be believable. Good non-fiction seems unbelievable but isn’t.”

Her latest book, The Wordy Shipmates, focuses on who she calls “two of the most flawed but interesting people in history,” Roger Williams and John Winthrop, who attempted to build a “city upon a hill” with the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. “The Puritans were usually seen as one-dimensional stereotypes: stupid and judgmental. But they could be brilliant and judgmental. Their writing is jammed packed with knowledge even if it is just a two-page letter,” she told students as she helped them understand what paths a story may take if you are open to all sides.

Besides helping students understand character dimension, she covered outline, writing and editing processes. “Editing requires that you face up to the fact that there will be wasted work. But everything that’s wrong in my first book, I learned from. Embrace your mistakes. Disappointment can lead you to something better. No one told me that when I was your age.”

Helping aspiring writers learn from the experience of professional writers is one of the reasons Sarah Vowell works with students across the country. “But I’m so impressed by this school and the people who go here,” she told the students at the class’ end. “You have a perspective and discipline that puts you way ahead. It will serve you well. NOCCA is one of my favorite public institutions in the country and you are very lucky to have it in your community. I wish I could have gone here.” We are so glad she visits now.

The NOCCA Institute presents celebrated author Dave Eggers!
Friday, November 6 at 8pm at NOCCA

On Friday, November 6, The NOCCA Institute’s CENTER STAGE series presents an evening with Dave Eggers! Eggers is a literary triple-threat: part author (his debut work, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and he co-wrote the screenplay for Where the Wild Things Are); part publisher (he’s the founder of multi-media powerhouse McSweeneys); and part teacher (his 826 Valencia project teaches writing and literacy in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Boston, and Ann Arbor). Join us at NOCCA as Eggers reads from his latest work, Zeitoun, the story of New Orleanian Abdulrahman Zeitoun and the astounding experiences he had in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Afterward, Eggers will be happy to answer questions, and Maple Street Book Shop will be on hand with books for him to sign.

This one-night-only event takes place Friday, November 6, 2009 at 8:00pm in Freda Lupin Memorial Hall on the NOCCA campus, 2800 Chartres Street. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased in advance by clicking here. A book-signing will follow the reading, with books sold by Maple Street Book Shop.

WHAT THE CRITICS HAVE SAID ABOUT ZEITOUN

“Eggers’s tone is pitch-perfect—suspense blended with just enough information to stoke reader outrage and what is likely to be a typical response: How could this happen in America?… It’s the stuff of great narrative nonfiction” – New York Times

“A fiercely elegant and simply eloquent tale…. So fierce in its fury, so beautiful in its richly nuanced, compassionate telling of an American tragedy, and finally, so sweetly, stubbornly hopeful.” — Times-Picayune

“Eggers’ sympathy for Zeitoun is as plain and real as his style in telling the man’s story. He doesn’t try to dazzle with heartbreaking pirouettes of staggering prose; he simply lets the surreal and tragic facts speak for themselves. And what they say about one man and the city he loves and calls home is unshakably poignant—but not without hope.” — Entertainment Weekly

“Zeitoun offers a transformative experience to anyone open to it, for the simple reasons that it is not heavy-handed propaganda, not eat-your-peas social analysis, but an adventure story, a tale of suffering and redemption, almost biblical in its simplicity, the trials of a good man who believes in God and happens to have a canoe. Anyone who cares about America, where it is going and where it almost went, before it caught itself, will want to read this thrilling, heartbreaking, wonderful book.” — Chicago Sun-Times

To start the new school year off as well as a new concert season, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra brought acclaimed pianist Fabio Bidini to NOCCA for an intensive master class with classical music students.

“When you play the first finger, the fourth finger already has to be over the note,” explained Mr. Bidini, one of the leading pianists to emerge from Italy in the last two decades and known for his technical wizardry and poetic lyricism. A frequent guest artists with orchestras worldwide, he has performed with the San Francisco Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra, The Philharmonic Orchestra of London, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and in venues including Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Royal Festival Hall in London and Rudolfinum in Prague.

That mastery and passion he brought to the residency at NOCCA in full force, breaking down the fundamentals of hand position and finger articulation at the same time raising students’ understanding of in depth technique. “The quality of the staccato of F that you have is not there because the note is too long. It is the correct note, but you have to pay attention to the quality of the sound. You work on this. Let’s go on.”

The student starts to play the next passage. Mr. Bidini stops her. “How difficult is it to play four notes in four different actions and four different lengths?” he asks. “The first finger will not play at the same level as the fifth finger because by nature the first finger is stronger,” he explains as he continuously works with the student on hand position.

“The last thing I want you to do at home for 10 minutes – if you don’t have the time, find it – is practice this scales exercise” Bidini says as he demonstrates. “The brain needs to be able to do the same thing with both hands. Practice scales with cross hands. Everything must feel natural. If it feels too difficult, it is because it is wrong,” he closes, smiling broadly and leaving students with much to absorb.

Del Shores: writer, comedian, and the creator of SORDID LIVES
returns to New Orleans for one night only!

Thursday, September 10 at NOCCA, 2800 Chartres Street, 7:30pm

Del Shores, the acclaimed writer/director/producer for theatre, television, and film, returns to New Orleans for a one-night-only performance of his hilarious one-man show DEL SHORES: MY SORDID LIFE. The performance will take place on Thursday, September 10, at 7:30pm at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, 2800 Chartres Street. Tickets can be purchased online by clicking here, or they can be purchased at the door (space permitting).

Shores is best known for SORDID LIVES (play, film, TV series), DADDY’S DYIN’ (WHO’S GOT THE WILL?) (play, film), and his controversial play SOUTHERN BAPTIST SISSIES. In DEL SHORES: MY SORDID LIFE, Shores shares the real-life stories that inspired those and other writings.

In addition to the performance, DEL SHORES: MY SORDID LIFE will feature a silent auction that’s perfect for TV and film buffs. Featured items include:

• An autographed set of Shores’ plays (all six!);
• The pilot script for SORDID LIVES: THE SERIES, autographed by entire cast and Del Shores;
• An autographed copy of the film, SORDID LIVES; and,
• A gift certificate for SORDID LIVES: THE SERIES DVD, Collector’s Edition, signed by Shores and the series’ star Jason Dottley, which will be shipped to the winner upon its release on October 13^th.

General admission tickets to this spectacular night are $25, and VIP tickets are available for $50. VIP tickets offer premium seating and a very special meet-and-greet with Shores after the show where refreshments will be served.

DEL SHORES: MY SORDID LIFE is produced by Dottley, who stars as “Ty” in SORDID LIVES: THE SERIES and who is also Shores’ husband. The couple remains one of the 18,000 legally married same-sex couples in California.

DEL SHORES: MY SORDID LIFE will play one night only — Thursday, September 10 — at NOCCA, 2800 Chartres Street in New Orleans’ historic Faubourg Marigny [click here for a map]. VIP tickets, which include a meet-and-greet with Mr. Shores after the performance, are $50; general admission tickets are $25. Both tickets can be purchased online by clicking here, or they may be purchased at the door (space permitting).

In May, Tony Award-winning actor, singer and musician  Michael Cerveris led master classes with both Musical Theatre and Vocal Music students.  The Vocal students were preparing their performances for the Classical Music Singers Competition in Chicago.  Excerpts from that class are below.

“In truth, technical correctness brings everyone to the same level.  What part of yourself you put into a performance is what distinguishes you.  The elevating force is what you bring, because nobody else is you,” Michael Cerveris said to students as they worked on the arcs their characters take over the course of an aria.

Level III Vocal student Joel Dyson was working on Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro.” “You have to find a way to descend into desperation as the song progresses, which takes us on the journey too,” Michael began.  As a girl transforming into a young woman over the course of just 12 lines, “you are realizing that if you can love this much, you can also feel this much pain.  Most of acting is what we do all the time.  We know how to act and talk until we put ourselves on the stage.”

While covering technique – using the percussive elements of voice, understanding nuances of delivery, knowing a whisper can be really intense as well as loud or gentle, bringing a different emotion to a lyric that is repeated twice – Michael encouraged students.  “You’re just working, it’s not going to be wrong.  Acting is a profession that is uncompromising and unkind; you develop a thick skin when facing rejection.  Yet the exact opposite is required to be an artist.  You need to be open, a blade of grass can move you emotionally.  But beyond your technical training, you want to live, to go to places you haven’t been, to meet people you don’t know.  An artist is a mirror. The more experiences you have, the more from which you can draw.  Remember, all it takes is someone really gifted, following their muse, to change everything.”

On April 24, 2009, alumnus Wynton Marsalis conducted a workshop, excerpted below, with NOCCA Level IV Jazz students for students from across New Orleans as part of the Jazz & Heritage Festival’s education outreach held at Tulane University’s Dixon Hall.

The NOCCA septet had just opened with   “Stablemates” by Benny Golson.

“When you are dealing with music and the arts, it’s important to be honest.” Wynton Marsalis began.  “We’re used to being polite so being honest is sometimes hard.  Tell me, what did you think of your performance?”  Were you swinging?  Was the audience?”

“Parts were good,” a student slowly answered.

“If I gave you a hamburger and some parts were good and some weren’t, would you eat it?” Wynton responded.  “You have to play with urgency and purpose all of the time. I want you all to start thinking.  When I see you in five years, I want to see that you are great.  Not just comfortable.”

Over an hour and a half, the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center dissected student performances and demonstrated with his own horn, covering the importance of knowing that intensity does not mean playing too loud or too long; leaving spaces between notes to diversify rhythms just as we speak, respecting your musical ideas, making intelligent choices, listening to and supporting fellow band members, and mastering New Orleans’ music tradition.

“I don’t know where I was going with the solo,” one student answered along the way.  “That’s right,” said Wynton. “That’s honest.  There’s nothing wrong with not knowing where you are going.  That is why you are learning.  Jazz is a music of communication.  We are talking about knowledge and intensity.  I want you to practice fundamentals, draw up your own schedule, be consistent, chart your progress, set goals, get over being shy – ask musicians questions; people don’t mind giving you information.  And live; if you don’t you won’t have anything to say.”

During one of many classes Delfeayo taught this year, he led students on both a technical and personal development track.

“By what measure will you consider yourselves successful?” Delfeayo asked each student before making them think further. “If I have mastered my instrument,” answered one student.  “If you have mastered your instrument, but haven’t recorded, are you successful?” Delfeayo questioned.  “I would be successful if I brought an aspect of myself to the music,” said another.  “But what if you are in a studio recording and your job is to play what others have written?”  “I’d be successful if I won an award” answered a third student.  Countered Delfeayo, “my brother and another musician won a Grammy for a song that was never released.  Is that successful? You have to know what success means to you.”

As Delfeayo proceeded to play a Thelonius Monk tune, he asked each student for an adjective to describe the song.  They responded with a diverse range of emotions: “exciting, fluent, careful, well-executed, relaxed, active, confident.”

Then he played a Charlie Parker tune. “Bird thought he had limited technique.  He makes it sound easy because he understands who he is.  It is really important for you to understand who you are. That will make it easier for you to communicate and communication is key.  Some  musicians will like lots of notes, others less, some musicians are more lyrical.  We are always in pursuit of personal awareness.”

“And we are in pursuit of knowledge.  Do not take education lightly.  Playing music, especially improvising, is problem-solving on the spot.  John Coltrane recorded many of his songs multiple times, but he only recorded Giant Steps once.  He used it to problem-solve, and once he had reached a solution, he moved on.  In your studies you need to know the language every musician has contributed.  Then figure out what you want to do.  Just putting licks over scales is like puting together a speech of clichés.”

Then Delfeayo brought it home: “Exciting, fluent, careful, relaxed, active, confident – if you can cover all these bases in your solo, as Monk did, you are successful.”

On April 22, 2009, The Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz presented The Blues and Jazz: Two American Classics.  Bringing together master artists and NOCCA students, the Monk Institute presented Antonio Hart (above left at piano), Guitar Slim, Jr., Lisa Henry, Richard Johnson, Derek Nievergelt and Otis Brown, III, with remarks by T. S. Monk, Jr., Chairman of the Board of Trustees (speaking above right).

“As soon as one culture is aware of another, there is an artistic sharing,” T. S. Monk, Jr. offered students in a wide ranging discussion. “People have always interacted musically.  As artists we don’t discriminate, we’re looking for all sounds.  Beethoven must have had huge ears.

The editing process is dictated by how much information you have taken in.  As a kid you might collect 2,000 baseball cards.  But as you learn more about the players, you start to edit your collection by who can really play.  Same for great musicians. As you assimilate information, you learn what you like and what your strengths are.  You are developing your own invisible bag of tricks, your reservoir.

When I was a young boy, there would be a knocking at the door.  I’d open it and there would stand Miles.  ‘Can you tell T Miles is here?’ he would ask.  I’d go tell dad and he would have me show Miles to the kitchen.  There was a piano in the kitchen and Rollins, Dizzy, Coltrane, Miles, all young guys at the time, would be there.  The mantra I heard among them and my dad all the time was ‘play your own stuff.’  All of you have to recapture that idea.  Develop your own mantra.  It quells the fear.  It is important for you all to support each other this way. Rollins, Dizzy, Coltrane, Miles, my dad, did that for each other.  Don’t wait for me or Antonio to come here.  Don’t wait for a teacher. Get into the habit of honesty.  Honesty is about courage and you get it from each other.”