The New Orleans Opera Association (NOOA) and OperaCréole are partnering with New Orleans Jazz Museum to create Innovative Explorations, a series of events, performances and exhibits tailored to educate the community throughout the year. The series is launching with a free reception on Friday June 14 at New Orleans Jazz Museum.

To launch the series which celebrates and explores the wide-ranging and important contributions made by musicians of color to New Orleans’ cultural and historical development, the performance will focus on Creole folk music, slave music and the work of classical composers of color from the 1800s, presented by OperaCréole. The event will also include excerpts from the group’s opera “Les Lions de la Reconstruction (The Lions of Reconstruction): From Black Codes to the Ballot Box.”

Thanks in large part to the research performed by NOOA and an eclectic group of local scholars, performers and others, the events will show an overlap between the musical and social development of New Orleans. With these events NOOA seeks to show the operatic roots of various music styles, such as the opera music performed by free people of color as a mode of gaining social distinction in the Postbellum South, which in turn influenced the development of contemporary styles, such as jazz and bounce.

Gallatin Street Records, the record label started by New Orleans Jazz Museum, will be recording the performances to share with schools throughout the country. The event begins at 6:30 p.m., with the performances starting at 7:30 p.m. New Orleans Jazz Museum is located between the French Quarter and Frenchmen st., at 400 Esplanade ave.

For more information, click here.