The New Orleans Jazz Museum will present a virtual celebration of International Jazz Day on Saturday, April 30. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., the museum’s Facebook page will be host to a full day of virtual performances, lectures, and archival content celebrating of the global impact of jazz music and culture, with a special performance focused on Lil Hardin Armstrong.
The headline performance of the evening will be “Caili O’Doherty: Celebrating Lil Hardin Armstrong.” This project brings to the forefront a voice that has been long forgotten. Lil Hardin Armstrong, the second wife of Louis Armstrong, was an African American woman pianist, composer and vocalist born in Memphis in 1898. She broke many barriers for women in jazz beginning in the 1920s, yet most people, including many jazz musicians and historians, do not know much about her.
Most people have heard of Lil Armstrong in the context of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five group, but she had a career of her own with King Oliver before ever encountering Louis Armstrong, and for 40 years after the couple divorced. Lil Armstrong led her own bands, wrote dozens of compositions (including several made famous by Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles) and played piano as a side musician for many years. She had a long legacy as a serious composer and created original works at a time when women were often relegated to singing or dancing in the chorus line.
This project features pianist Caili O’Doherty and her arrangements of Lil Hardin Armstrong compositions performed by O’Doherty’s sextet: Tahira Clayton and Michael Mayo (vocals), Nicole Glover (tenor saxophone), Tamir Shmerling (bass) and Cory Cox (drums).
This performance, which is the second of a three-part series, will premier on the New Orleans Jazz Museum’s Facebook Page at 7 p.m. CDT. Part three of this concert series will be presented by the Alabama Women in Jazz Festival later this year on May 22.
This project is made possible by a grant from Chamber Music America and its Presenters Consortium for Jazz program which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
For additional information about this program and others on Jazz Appreciation Day, visit the museum’s website.
