The Preservation Hall Jazz Band and its historic home on St. Peter Street in the French Quarter are the subjects of this year’s official “Aural History” Jazz Fest poster. The 45th anniversary edition Jazz & Heritage Festival poster, released February 4, is one of two official designs produced annually by Art4Now and a collaborative artist for Jazz Fest. Visual artist Terrance Osborne returns again this year, offering us his colorful interpretation of Preservation Hall’s legacy.

2014 Jazz Fest poster by Terrance Osborne

The 2014 Jazz Fest poster is Osborne’s fourth in the ongoing annual series, his first Jazz Fest poster produced in 2007 for the “Congo Square” series venerating the Rebirth Brass Band. He has since also created the 2010 “Congo Square” edition honoring the late Uncle Lionel Batiste of the Treme Brass Band and the 2012 “Aural History” series poster, featuring Trombone Shorty. A native New Orleanian and graduate of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and Xavier University, Osborne’s notoriety rapidly grew after the release of the 2007 Rebirth poster. His powerful use of color and dedication to arts education in New Orleans are reflected vividly in his Jazz Fest posters and in his corporate commissions for clients like Nike and the New Orleans Hornets.

Fine art prints and company Art4Now has been producing the official Jazz Fest posters since 1998, the year the festival began commissioning the second poster series, entitled “Congo Square.” However, all of the vintage Jazz Fest posters available, dating back to 1975, can be found on the Art4Now website. In addition to regular silk-screen prints, limited edition signed and numbered museum-paper prints of the 2014 Jazz Fest poster are available now for pre-order through Art4Now, as well as only 350 screen-printed 24″ x 40″ marque canvases over-painted by Osborne.

2014 Jazz & Heritage Festival “Aural History” Official Poster Series 45th Anniversary Edition Artistic Statement:

Traditional New Orleans jazz is over a hundred years young. It could only have developed in the jubilant melting pot that distinguishes the Crescent City. But half way through its journey to now, it suffered a midlife crisis. People stopped listening. Its musicians sat idle. Rock and roll took most young ears by 1960, except a pair belonging to a jazz tubist from Pottsville, PA – Allan Jaffe. He moved to New Orleans with his wife, Sandra, to open Preservation Hall in a circa 1817 French Quarter structure at 726 St. Peter in 1961. This venue for jazz pioneers reminded the world that this organized yet extemporaneous mélange was the American sound track. The Jaffes’ gift did more than preserve New Orleans jazz: It reinvigorated it, ultimately creating a self-renewing trans-generational hand-off to new masters and devotees that continues today.

In 1963, Jaffe organized the Preservation Hall Jazz Band as a touring group to bring this joyous noise to the world. By 1967, the Band had seduced the beast that nearly devoured New Orleans jazz, triumphantly playing alongside The Grateful Dead, Santana, and Steppenwolf at a Bill Graham concert in San Francisco. Tours grew to encompass global festivals and collaborations, culminating in 2012’s 50th anniversary performance in Carnegie Hall. A 50-year old band will have some personnel changes over the years but this band probably sets the record at 46 members and counting. And in a city of legacies, none is more poignant than that the tuba chair has been passed to Allan and Sandra’s son, Ben Jaffe, who also mans the upright bass in the Band’s current eight-man lineup. Thirty-one albums and one National Medal of Arts later, the Band and the Hall prove what’s old is new & what’s new is old.

Preservation Hall was part of the City’s mosaic for fifteen years before Terrance Osborne first opened his eyes on New Orleans’ centuries-old pictographic landscape. Paralleling what the PHJB did with traditional music, Osborne reinvigorated classic painting with a compellingly fresh American figurative approach reminiscent of the advances crafted by Thomas Hart Benton – albeit set in America’s most charismatic urban landscape. Osborne’s striking use of complementary colors burnishes the humid city’s nocturnal patina and illuminates this work in particular.

This, Osborne’s fourth poster for art4now (Congo Square 2007 & 2010; Jazz Fest 2012), shows his continuing evolution as an artist, leveraging his vigorous style to reveal his subject’s depth. His shrewd use of a trump l’oeil sleight to preserve the buildings’ orthogonal geometry and maintain the Band’s vertical plane is masterful. His allegory of the band emerging from its historic home binds the two and alludes to its going on tour as if a marching band, a heritage it shares but does not embody. From the smallest details, such as perched pigeons, to his placing Ben overseeing the Band’s arc – a curve that pulls the viewer deep into the Hall, Osborne delivers history with knowing grace.

The 2014 “Congo Square” Jazz Fest poster is to be released later this season. Both posters will be available at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival April 25 – May 4, pre-orders and limited editions available now at www.art4now.com.

• 10,000 Numbered prints on archival paper, 16” x 33”, $69
• 2,500 Artist-signed & numbered prints on 100% rag paper, 18” x 35”, $239
• 750 Artist signed and pencil remarqued, signed by each Band member & numbered Remarque prints on 100% rag paper, 20” x 39”, $595
• 350 Artist-overpainted and signed, signed by each Band member & numbered C-Marque canvas screen prints, suitable for stretching, 24” x 40”, $895