Kenne & Joy In New Orleans (12/26/07) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Decatur Street, New Orleans (12/26/07) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Heart Within A Heart
Ther is a heart within your heart A place go when all the trouble starts When your world spins upside down and falls apart There is a heart within your heart
There is a soul within your soul A secret room only angels know Come on baby, leave your fear, rise up and go To the soul within the soul
A Teacher’s Teacher: Ellis Marsalis (November 14, 1934, April 1, 2020) Image Source: Chicago Tribune
All of us reach an age when it seems like every day someone of our generation dies, even more now with the COVID-19 pandemic. Sadly, on April 1, a giant in education and jazz became one of the numbers in the current pandemic.
In the 1980s, Ellis Marsalis, with his sons, became the fresh new face to a resurgence of jazz in the last decades of the 20th century. “My dad was a giant of a musician and teacher, but an even greater father,” Branford Marsalis said in a statement. “He poured everything he had into making us the best of what we could be.”
Ellis Marsalis had a light and graceful touch at the piano, allowing his enter fellings to pour out like a gentle flowing mountain stream. He had held a weekly gig for decades at Snug Harbor, one of New Orleans’s premier jazz clubs, before giving it up in December.
The New Times critic, Stephen Holden wrote: “Sticking mainly to the middle register of the keyboard, the pianist offered richly harmonized arrangements in which fancy keyboard work was kept to a minimum and studious melodic invention, rather than pronounced bass patterns, determined the structures and tempos.”
One of my favorite Cole Porter songs done superbly by Ellis and his son Branford.
Foggy Morning In New Orleans (December 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Beauty in the Rain
If you fancy that you have an eye for beauty,
test it on a rainy day…
A cold and foggy day that wears no make-up.
Test it in the shades of gray
that consume the sun and rob the flowers of their colors,
leaving them forlorn in dingy places
like tired and aging ballerinas in faded dancing clothes;
huddling in the drafty wings of empty opera houses.
Gaze across the rooftops and the chimneys,
painted like Utrillo’s Paris
On the canvas of the smoke and fog
of a dying afternoon in winter.
It takes no eye for beauty
to find it on a lovely day.
It thrusts itself upon you
in the sunshine and the warm.
But it hides; becomes aloof, elusive
in the cold and in the rain.
Over the years we have walked miles in the New Orleans French Quarter and the Garden District. A few weeks ago while in Houston, we drove over to New Orleans for a couple of days. Even though it was hot and humid we spent time photographing many scenes we have captured in the past — there’s just something luring about this city.
A Jackson Square Morning — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Kenne & Joy In New Orleans (12/26/07) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Decatur Street, New Orleans (12/26/07) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Foggy Morning On The Square (Jackson Square) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
A Teacher’s Teacher: Ellis Marsalis (November 14, 1934, April 1, 2020) Image Source: Chicago Tribune 
Foggy Morning In Jackson Square — Photo-Artistry by kenne
New Orleans Gallery Window — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Foggy Morning In New Orleans (December 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Coffee Time (Sidewalk Jazz at Cafe Du Monde, French Quarter) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Place d’Armes Courtyard, French Quarter, New Orleans — Photo-Artistry by kenne
French Quarter Carriage — Image by kenne
Rouses Market, New Orleans — Photo-Artistry by kenne
