Jazz at Lincoln Center Announces Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert and Auction September 17

Jazz at Lincoln Center Announces Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert and Auction September 17

Concert will be Nationally Televised on PBS' Live from Lincoln Center and Broadcast Live on National Public Radio, XM Satellite Radio & WBGO JAZZ88.3FM

Hosted by Laurence Fishburne, Featuring Wynton Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Ken Burns, Shirley Caesar, Cyrus Chestnut, Peter Cincotti, Bill Cosby, Elvis Costello, Robert De Niro, Paquito D'Rivera, Jon Hendricks, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Abbey Lincoln, Bette Midler, Dianne Reeves, Marcus Roberts, Paul Simon, Meryl Streep, James Taylor, Mccoy Tyner, Robin Williams, Cassandra Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, Buckwheat Zydeco and more tba!

Jazz at Lincoln Center will record live CD to be released by Blue Note Records with all profits going to hurricane relief fund efforts

Auction items include autographed Martin guitar by Eric Clapton and John Mayer; items from LeRoy Neiman, Candlewick Press and more tba

NEW YORK, Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Jazz at Lincoln Center today announced plans to produce the Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert and Auction on Saturday, September 17 at 7pm at Rose Theater in Frederick P. Rose Hall on Broadway at 60th Street in New York City. Contributions to the Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Fund will benefit New Orleans musicians affected by Hurricane Katrina and provide general hurricane relief. "New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz. The city's diverse population of Spanish, French, British, West Africans and Americans created an original music that embodies the fundamental principals of democracy. Jazz at Lincoln Center was established to celebrate jazz and so we are particularly moved to action by the destruction visited on the Crescent City by Katrina," said Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center Wynton Marsalis. "The focus of the Fund will be to help those individuals and families evacuated from the greater New Orleans area as they address immediate concerns related to housing, food, education, health care and basic survival necessities. The Fund will also provide resources to assist individuals over time to rebuild their homes and livelihoods," said Derek E. Gordon, President and CEO of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The Fund will be administered and distributed through the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, a non-profit community foundation. Baton Rouge has become a staging ground for many of the relief efforts, and as many as 500,000 individuals have been relocated there. The Baton Rouge Area Foundation is working with organizations in the region to assure that services and resources directly reach those most affected.

The concert, hosted by Laurence Fishburne, will feature Wynton Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Ken Burns, Shirley Caesar, Cyrus Chestnut, Peter Cincotti, Elvis Costello, Bill Cosby, Robert De Niro, Paquito D'Rivera, Jon Hendricks, Norah Jones, Diana Krall, Abbey Lincoln, Bette Midler, Dianne Reeves, Marcus Roberts, Paul Simon, Meryl Streep, James Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Robin Williams, Cassandra Wilson, Jeffrey Wright, Buckwheat Zydeco and many more tba.

The Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Benefit Concert and Auction will be televised live nationally on Live From Lincoln Center on PBS, hosted by Beverly Sills. XM Satellite Radio will carry this concert live on their network from coast to coast on channel 70, the Real Jazz channel. Higher Ground will also be broadcast live via radio partner WBGO Jazz88.3FM in the New York City area and offered nationally and internationally via National Public Radio and its 807 member stations in the U.S., NPR Worldwide, and streamed live on http://www.npr.org/, http://www.wbgo.org/, http://www.xmradio.com/. The event will be recorded by Jazz at Lincoln Center and a CD will be produced and released by Blue Note Records with all profits going to relief fund efforts.

Concert tickets are available at the Jazz at Lincoln Center box office at Broadway at 60th St., by calling CenterCharge at (212) 721-6500 or via http://www.jalc.org/. CenterCharge service fees will be donated to hurricane relief efforts. Ticket prices are $50, $100, $500, $1000, $5000, $10,000. Those wishing to make donations to the Jazz at Lincoln Center Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Fund may also do so by mailing checks payable to: Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Fund to Jazz at Lincoln Center, 33 West 60th Street, New York, New York 10023.

The Higher Ground benefit event will include an auction. Items to be auctioned include a 000-28 Martin Eric Clapton model guitar, autographed by Eric Clapton and John Mayer; artwork by LeRoy Neiman; artwork by Peter Max and items from Miramax Films. Paul Rogers and Candlewick Press are pleased to donate ten pre-publication, first edition copies of Jazz ABZ: An A To Z Collection of Jazz Portraits by Wynton Marsalis that will be signed by the author and the illustrator. Each book will be accompanied by a special edition print (15" x 15" framed) that features one of the following ten artists portrayed in the book: Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Blakey, Jelly Roll Morton, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Fats Waller, Dizzy Gillespie. More details tba.

Jazz at Lincoln Center is a not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to jazz. With the world-renowned Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra and a comprehensive array of guest artists, Jazz at Lincoln Center advances a unique vision for the continued development of the art of jazz by producing a year-round schedule of performance, education, and broadcast events for audiences of all ages. These productions include concerts, national and international tours, residencies, weekly national radio and television programs, recordings, publications, an annual high school jazz band competition and festival, a band director academy, a jazz appreciation curriculum for children, advanced training through the Juilliard Institute for Jazz Studies, music publishing, children's concerts, lectures, adult education courses and student and educator workshops. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis, Chairman of the Board Lisa Schiff, President & CEO Derek E. Gordon, Executive Director Katherine E. Brown and Jazz at Lincoln Center board and staff, Jazz at Lincoln Center will produce hundreds of events during its 2005-06 season. In October 2004, Jazz at Lincoln Center opened Frederick P. Rose Hall -- the first-ever performance, education, and broadcast facility devoted to jazz. For more information, visit http://www.jalc.org/.

* Wynton Marsalis, Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center makes a statement about the devastation in his hometown of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina:

New Orleans is the most unique of American cities because it is the only city in the world that created its own full culture -- architecture, music and festive ceremonies. It's of singular importance to the United States of America because it was the original melting pot with a mixture of Spanish, French, British, West African and American people living in the same city. The collision of these cultures created jazz and jazz is important because it's the only art form that objectifies the fundamental principals of American democracy. That's why it swept the country and the world representing the best of the United States.

New Orleanians are blues people. We are resilient, so we are sure that our city will come back. This tragedy, however, provides an opportunity for the American people to demonstrate to ourselves and to the world that we are one nation determined to overcome our legacies of injustices based on race and class. At this time all New Orleanians need the nation to unite in a deafening crescendo of affirmation to silence that desperate cry that is this disaster.

We need people with their prayers, their pocketbooks, and above all their sense of purpose to show the world just who the modern American is and then we'll put our city back together in even greater fashion. This is gut check time for all of us as Americans.

In a country with the most incredible resources in the world we need the ingenuity of our best engineers to put the cultural heart of our nation back together. To put it together with 2005 technical expertise and with 2005 social consciousness, which means without accommodating the ignorance of racism and the deplorable conditions of poverty, and lack of education that have been allowed to fester in many great American cities since slavery.

We're only as civilized as our level of hospitality. Let's demonstrate to the world that what actually makes America the most powerful nation on earth is not guns, pornography and material wealth but transcendent and abiding soul, something perhaps we have lost a grip on, and this catastrophe gives us a great opportunity to handle up.

Source: Jazz at Lincoln Center

CONTACT: Mary Fiance Fuss, Director, Public Relations, +1-212-258-9829, mfuss@jalc.org, or Zooey Tidal, Assistant Director, Public Relations, +1-212-258-9821, ztidal@jalc.org, both of Jazz at Lincoln Center

Web site: http://www.jalc.org/ http://www.npr.org/ http://www.wbgo.org/ http://www.xmradio.com/

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