Irvin Mayfield’s bridge of second probabilities

Two weeks ago, the guts of New Orleans pulsated beneath a freeway in America’s oldest black neighborhood. Inside a 20-seat jazz club, you will find all the town’s treasures — the smell of world-famous barbecue and traditional red beans and rice; the sound of award-winning trumpets and 10 gospel singers gathered along the edges of the room; local regulars hanging out on a back patio eating turkey necks; and eager visitors from all corners of the world arriving at 5:30 p.m. to secure a seat for the 6 p.m. show. The feel is raw, the taste is real, and the visuals might not be what you’d find on a New Orleans postcard. But they must be. And it’s on every Tuesday.

Then comes Wednesday, 4 miles down the road, where the town’s most exclusive VIP party of the 12 months takes place in a 22,000-square-foot Romanesque Revival mansion. Two hundred of the culinary world’s most decorated chefs and industry giants step onto the sidewalk of St. Charles Avenue’s second-largest home, their mouths hanging open as they stride through a fanfare of brass instruments played by New Orleans’ most famous highschool marching band – The St. Augustine High School Marching 100Inside, five of New Orleans’ most notable chefs and restaurant owners occupy five rooms on the bottom floor of the property, while each room is home to over 30 local musicians (a harpist, a trio of Afro-Cuban percussionists, and a 10-person “Trumpet Mafia,” to call a number of). The evening then culminates with a full-blown rock concert on a custom-built stage positioned above the property’s primary staircase. And it’s all for one night only.

New Orleans is actually a tale of two cities connected not only by music, but by second probabilities. How a newcomer like me finds an invite to those culturally diverse experiences is, quite frankly, a virtually unimaginable feat if it weren’t for one musician and the second probability he took upon coming back from prison.

If resilience and creativity are at the guts of all second probabilities, then New Orleans’ resilient and artistic fabric is a direct reflection of Irvin Mayfield’s personal hero’s journey.

“When my father drowned within the [Hurricane] “After Katrina, like so many others, I felt an urge to come back with more strength and purpose,” says two-time Grammy and Billboard Award winner Irvin Mayfield. Mayfield was the primary cultural employee to return after the storm, performing and helping to rebuild the cultural landscape, for which he was honored by President George W. Bush with the White House Communications Appreciation Award. And Mayfield continued to emerge from the storm with positions as artistic director of the Minnesota Orchestra and the Apollo Theater, was named a cultural ambassador by the town and state, received countless international awards for his service, and was appointed to the White House National Council on the Arts by President Bush in 2005 and President Obama in 2009.

But then got here his own storm with a unique sort of death.

In 2015, Mayfield found himself at the middle of a serious investigation that ultimately landed him an 18-month sentence at FPC Pensacola. Like many others navigating the white collar crimes system, Mayfield was forced to resign from his professorships and directorships and leave the organization he founded and led for nearly twenty years – the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. It was an expert storm that required a wholly latest mindset and an entire spiritual renewal.

“Prison was a humbling experience,” says Mayfield. “But it was an opportunity for me to form deep friendships and creative partnerships,” he continues, speaking particularly of fellow New Orleans artist and cultural figure Kermit Ruffins. Mayfield described that, whether within the difficult years before his prison sentence or the difficult adjustment period afterward, “Kermit [Ruffins] was always an anchor in the storm.”

In November 2017, a month before the costs were filed against him, Mayfield released an ambitious and hugely successful record with Ruffins called Beautiful World – an LP that featured greater than 40 artists, reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts, and was chosen by NASA to be performed on the International Space Station. And since Mayfield’s release from prison in January 2023, he and Ruffins have performed live together weekly. Kermit Ruffins’ Treme Mother-in-Law Lounge.

“Irvin is a builder, you know?” says Kermit Ruffins, world-famous trumpeter, chef and owner of the Treme Mother-in-Law Lounge. “Nobody can deny that he builds great things, and on Tuesdays [at the Mother-in-Law Lounge] Area Really great thing.”

Like many neighborhoods, New Orleans’ historic Treme neighborhood was mushrooming with talent before Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. For nearly a decade, it was feared that the storm had almost completely extinguished that fireside; it’s obvious that the flames burn brightly there under the Claiborne Avenue Bridge. And Tuesdays are such a “must-see” experience that even the Today Show’s Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush decided to spend the evening on the Mother-in-Law Lounge. after they visited New Orleans this 12 months in the course of the festival season. (There is even a special “Tuesdays T-shirt” that can soon be available to most people online at www.irvinmayfieldmusic.com).

“Miraculously, Mayfield found creative freedom through it all,” says Steve Rehage, founding father of the Voodoo Music Festival and an everyday Tuesday attendee at The Mother in Law (and in addition attended the coveted Wednesday night party). “The musical ideas he needed to refine, [Federal Prison Camp] Pensacola are strengthened by the performance he developed at Kermit [Mother-in-Law Lounge]. It was a vital stepping stone to what he’s producing now.”

It’s called Music Church and I used to be finally capable of experience it in person.

Irvin Mayfield’s Music Church was the culmination of some of the recent significant events in New Orleans – the Bocuse d’Or America’s Continental SelectionAs the primary U.S. city to host the biennial Bocuse d’Or competition, New Orleans welcomed the world’s most prestigious culinary players for per week of competitions and VIP parties.

“For years, Irvin was always the person you called when you wanted to create musical magic,” said attorney John Houghtaling, owner of the sprawling estate at 4717 St. Charles Avenue, as he recalled several events he and Mayfield had worked on together up to now. Houghtaling and his wife, Yulia Timonina-Houghtaling, a lawyer and popular Russian singer, often host events at their New Orleans home, but nothing compared in scope to the Bocuse d’Or event.

So Houghtaling appropriately appointed Mayfield because the event’s creative director.

“We’ve hosted many parties, but this one was of the highest caliber,” said Houghtaling. “The music and culinary experiences had to be perfect. I needed a cultural attaché, and since Irvin had already served in that role for two sitting U.S. presidents, I knew he could pull it off. And he did.”

Mayfield compared the experience to his creative direction of the North American Summit events for President George W. Bush. “Our team was tasked with bringing together the greatest cultural values ​​of a cultural epicenter. [New Orleans] for some of the most culturally educated people in the world,” Mayfield notes. “It was truly a crowning experience for me personally and for our city.”

Local New Orleans chefs EJ Lagasse (son of famous chef and restaurant owner Emeril Lagasse), Justin Devillier (Le Petit Grocery) Jackie Blanchard (Sukoban), Ashwin Vilkhu (Saffron) and Baruch Rabasa (house chef to John and Yulia Houghtaling) cooked and presented their dishes within the five different rooms of the WP Brown mansion. And as unbelievable because the food was, the music was on par with the celebrity chefs who were all on their feet at Mayfield’s last Music Church performance.

The audience couldn’t help but rise up and onto the dance floor to sing and dance together with Mayfield’s choir and multi-instrumental performance. But seeing Thomas Keller (Captain of the US kitchen team, known for his renowned restaurant in Napa Valley, The French Laundry), Daniel Buloud And Jerome Bocuse (after whose father the Bocuse d’Or competition is called) was a real testament to what this city has to supply.

“Chefs are not only creative artists, they are also very influential business people,” notes Houghtaling. “They could be anywhere, and they not only stayed to enjoy food from our city’s best chefs, but they stayed for hours afterward to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime musical experience.”

But Mayfield at all times remembers the common-or-garden beginnings by which he refined his Music Church concept – as an worker within the prison chapel at FPC Pensacola. With the camp chaplain as his guide and mentor, Mayfield devoted his time, mind and soul to uplifting his fellow inmates with a weekly Sunday service – a much-desired break from the monotony of prison life. Mayfield’s service grew from 6 attendees to a packed hall experience with standing room only.

“Mayfield played religious music, jazz, pop, rock, and everything in between,” noted a fellow inmate at FPC Pensacola. “He started a program that really encouraged others to join in and lose themselves in music. He played every instrument and even offered music lessons to any inmate who wanted to learn how to play.”

Another prisoner expressed it very aptly: “He was a blessing that – unfortunately for the men left behind – cannot be replaced.”

Whether within the confines of a jail, under an oft-forgotten bridge, or on the highest of the custom-built Eschalon gallery in downtown New Orleans, Irvin Mayfield proves that our own hero’s journey will cross many bridges and hopefully require a magical mixture of music and second probabilities.