Irvin Mayfield

Irvin Mayfield, 31, is a Grammy and Billboard-award winning Trumpeter. His dual passion for Jazz and New Orleans, the city of his birth, has quickly established Mayfield as one of the young giants in the world of Jazz. His music, which draws from all aspects of New Orleans life and culture, re-imagines unique New Orleans styles and blends them into an authentic 21st century jazz sound. As the founder and artistic director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO), a performing arts institution dedicated to presenting engaging and transformative Jazz experiences, Mayfield recently led the 15-piece NOJO on a 20-city tour of “New Orleans Then and Now”, a multi-media musical tour de force. On the forefront of promoting the culture and business of Jazz, Mayfield entered into a historic partnership with the Royal Sonesta Hotels in March 2009 and opened the Irvin Mayfield’s Jazz Playhouse on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. As a proponent of linking Jazz with academia, Mayfield is a professor and serves as artistic director of the New Orleans Jazz Institute at the University of New Orleans. He was also appointed artistic director of jazz for the internationally acclaimed Minnesota Orchestra in 2008. Expanding his media platforms, Mayfield recently launched “The Life and Times of Irvin Mayfield”, a talk format show on WGSO 990 AM in New Orleans that is streamed on www.wgso.com. As host, Mayfield has interviewed such notable guest as James Carville, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, New Orleans Saints Drew Brees, former HUD Director Henry Cisneros, Wynton Marsalis, and bass sensation Esperanza Spaulding. Mayfield co-founded the Latin jazz group Los Hombres Calientes, whose debut CD won Billboard’s Latin Music Award for Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year. Their third CD, Vol3: New Orleans Congo Square was nominated for a Grammy. Los Hombres Calientes released a total of five albums on Basin Street Records, and Mayfield released another five albums as a leader on that label, including “Love Songs, Ballads and Standards” in 2008. It was the first major release on the label since Hurricane Katrina. On it, he and Ellis Marsalis, the patriarch of the Marsalis family, perform instrumental interpretations of time-tested classics. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Mayfield who lost his dad in the storm composed All The Saints, a critically acclaimed spiritual ode to the city of New Orleans. Commissioned by the Episcopal Dean of the Christ Church Cathedral, the first of its kind by an Episcopal diocese, All The Saints was performed in the cathedral served and served as the first major cultural event inside the city post-Katrina. In tribute to all of the victims of Hurricane Katrina, famed trumpet designer David Monette created the Elysian Trumpet, a 14-karat gold one-of-a-kind trumpet depicting the storms effects on the city of Jazz. The beautiful trumpet is as unique as Mayfield himself, who continues to grow as a composer, musician, academic, and cultural ambassador to the city of New Orleans.