[Figelac]

The esteemed gentleman from Black Swan Records and I were just discussing, at the tail end of the Juno thread, how great it would be to get Alvin Batiste up here for a gig.

For those of you not familiar with Alvin's work, he's a clarinet player from New Orleans who grew up in the Magnolia Projects ( he told me about listening to the Wild Magnolia Mardi Gras Indian Tribe practice their songs and drumming in the courtyard outside his bedroom window as a child) was a child prodogy ( debuted on Mozart clarinet concerto in a performance with the New Orleans Symphony at 17. Some of the older cats on the N.O. scene still call him by the nickname "Mozart") later played baritone sax with Ray Charles, hung out and recorded with Ornette Coleman, and was instrumental, along with Ellis Marsalis and Edward "Kidd" Jordan, in creating the system of jazz education that has given us the current crop of young New Orleans hotshots.

Nou you mentioned his India Navigation recordings and also the Clarinet Summit. There's also his excellent Columbia Jazzmasters recording "Late" (with Kenny Barron , Rufus Reid and ex-Batiste student and current Southern University faculty member Herman Jackson on drums). When I saw Alvin at the IAJE convention in New Orleans in Jan. 2000 he gave me a copy of his latest (Songs, Words and Messages Connections, on South Louisiana Records) with a request that I get it to Coastal Jazz and Blues with an eye to setting something up at a future festival. I ran into John Orysik ( John and Ken were at the conference as well) later the same day and gave him the CD. It's mixture of Pan-Africanism, New Orleans funk and 20th century classical vocabulary was something I thought would be right up Coastal's alley but for whatever reason I guess they chose not to pursue it.

Are there any other Batiste fans out there? I know Ken and John occasionally look in on this forum. Maybe a rousing chorus of "We Want Alvin" would convince them to reconsider.

www.Johndoheny.com