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| Kidd Jordan Day in the City of New Orleans May 5, 2022 On Thursday morning, May 5, 2022, the City of New Orleans, its City Council, led by Oliver Thomas of District E, and Mayor Latoya Cantrell, will Proclaim Kidd Jordan Day in the Council Chambers at 1300 Perdido Street. The Order is set for 10:00 a.m. Edward "Kidd" Jordan turns 87 on this day. Kidd Jordan is an international and local treasure. He's taught music to students in Louisiana over seven decades, the same span of time that he's expanded boundaries for music through numberless channels round the world. The students who have benefited from Kidd are likewise numberless. They include Kid Thomas, Roger Lewis, Carl LeBlanc, Charles and Kirk Joseph, Wynton and Branford Marsalis, Donald Harrison Jr., Courtney Bryan, Jonathan Batiste, John Michael Bradford, Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, Calvin Johnson, and Troy Andrews (Trombone Shorty). Kidd helped to co-found the New Orleans College of Creative Arts (NOCCA) and WWOZ. He led the Institute for Jazz Studies at Southern University for four decades from the 1970s onward. He's been Creative Director of Jackie Harris' Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp since 1995. His musical collaborators are also numberless. They include Alvin Batiste (his brother-in-law), Clyde Kerr, Alvin Fielder, Fred Anderson of Chicago, former students Darrell Lavigne and Brian Quezergue, Peter Kowald of Germany, and Hamiet Bluiett, David Murray, and Oliver Lake of the World Saxophone Quartet, and his bandmates of the 21st-century In Order to Survive, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Lewis Barnes, Rob Brown, Dave Burrell, and Cooper Moore. His legacy includes, too, seven children with wife Edvidge, four of them world-class musicians, Kent, Stephanie, Rachel and Marlon. Something else Kidd brings to tables he encounters. A great and sly sense of humor, one. Too, and perhaps more, a commitment to integrity rooted in himself—and his years of practice as teacher and player—that makes him always one to trust for both everyday and elevated honesty. Kidd once said about his close friend and fellow saxophonist, Fred Anderson, following a litany of Fred's accomplishments: "You could say that he's an artist." Kidd Jordan is an artist. Please join in the celebration of him at New Orleans' City Hall, this coming Thursday, in the Council Chambers, 1300 Perdido Street, around (it's New Orleans) 10:00 a.m. write your comments about the article :: © 2022 Jazz News :: home page |