UNO Jazz at the Sandbar has returned for Spring 2021. OffBeat’s Best of the Beat winner for Best Emerging Artist, Mahmoud Chouki, is slated to play.

The late Ellis Marsalis, the first Chairman of the Jazz Studies Program at the University of New Orleans, established “Jazz at the Sandbar” in 1990. The series is designed to provide UNO Jazz Studies students an opportunity to get real-life experience performing with respected professional musicians in front of a live audience. The series is presented during the fall and spring semesters on Wednesday nights and features a different respected jazz artist each week. While currently not being performed in person, the series still provides a medium in which students exercise their improvisational skills and gives them the rare opportunity to work with jazz masters.

Produced by the New Orleans Jazz Celebration, Jazz at the Sandbar is held in conjunction with the UNO Jazz Studies Program, creating a performance series Downbeat Magazine calls “One of the best things going in America.” Due to the pandemic, this season will be a bit different from our usual series. Like the fall series, the performers will be local, respected jazz stars and their bands, however, they will not be performing in front of the usual live audience at the Sandbar, instead, the shows will be streamed through the University of New Orleans’ Jazz Studies’ Facebook page with limited student participation.

“Jazz @ the Sandbar” is presented by the UNO Jazz Studies Program with support from the New Orleans Jazz Celebration and OffBeat Magazine. The shows will be streamed through the School of the Arts’ Facebook page.

The lineup is as follows:

April 7: Carl LeBlanc
April 14: Mahmoud Chouki
April 21: NOLATET w/ Aurora Nealand
April 28: Amina Figarova
May 5: Student Combo Showcase