NEW ORLEANS (AP) ― At 101 years old, New Orleans jazz trumpeter Lionel Ferbos opened one of 12 stages on the second day of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Billy Joel brought the crowds.
Couples danced and some sang along to old jazz standards such as “Back Home In Indiana” and “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” on Saturday.
Ferbos is believed to be the oldest actively working musician in the city. He performs regularly at the Palm Court Jazz Club in the French Quarter.
“He epitomizes New Orleans,” said New Orleans resident Medora Monigold, a Jazz Fest veteran and fan of Ferbos. “In a day where the elders are not respected, he reminds us that wisdom and talent can exist at any age.”
Monigold enjoyed a plate of seafood casserole and fried green tomatoes as she tapped her foot to the music.
Maryruth Senechal, of Hartford, Conn., said Ferbos was excellent. She said she catches his shows often at the Palm Court but prefers his performances at Jazz Fest.
“Here, I can dance and second-line. I love the old traditional brass band jazz,” she said.
Senechal and her husband, Jean-Guy, have attended Jazz Fest 14 times and spend most of the festival at the jazz tent, where other acts for the day included trumpeter and singer Wendell Brunious and singer-pianist Tim Laughlin.
Brunious brought couples to their feet as he sang “I Will Never Be the Same” and “Big Chief,” an upbeat number commonly performed at Mardi Gras that had many in the crowd dancing and hoisting umbrellas in the tradition known as second line. He closed his set with the New Orleans favorite “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
On one of the bigger stages, the brass band Bonerama jammed before a crowd of thousands under sunny skies and a gentle breeze that broke through the warm temperatures.
“The sky is smiling upon us,” said Quint Davis, the festival’s producer. “We do it rain or shine, but we reach the spirit and zenith when in the sunshine.”
Davis said Friday’s opening day saw bigger crowds than last year.
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