Switzerland brings in local musician to curate New Orleans-themed music fest

1st February 2021   ·   0 Comments

By Michael Patrick Welch
Contributing Writer

Everyone around the world wants a little piece of New Orleans. Cities in Europe, Japan and other countries attempt to recreate New Orleans culture for their enjoyment, mostly via music festivals packed with artists New Orleanians might catch on Frenchmen Street or at French Quarter Fest.

JazzAscona, the New Orleans-themed Swiss music festival, has announced that Grammy Award-winning New Orleans musician Adonis Rose will serve as that festival’s New Orleans Music and Culture Curator.

Adonis also currently serves as the artistic director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO). “I started out as a member of NOJO when it was first formed in 2002,” said Rose via phone from his home in Slidell. “I played the band’s first ever concert at Tipitina’s, and played with NOJO throughout the years. In 2016, I became Irvin Mayfield’s replacement. I came in after he…came out.” (Mayfield resigned in 2016 amidst an embezzlement investigation involving him and the New Orleans Public Library Foundation.)

The city of Ascona Switzerland has held JazzAscona annually since 1975.

“They have made a huge investment in the culture of New Orleans,” Rose attested. “I’ve had the honor of going to perform there starting in 2009 with NOJO. Then in 2020, I began directly partnering with the festival; I have a booking agency that I own, that now books the New Orleans music and cultural portion of that festival.”

Rose will also head up the exchange program that brings Swiss musicians to New Orleans.

Rose and company have just begun booking for this summer’s JazzAscona, which is scheduled between June 24 to July 3. “If I tell you who all we’ve booked, there’s still a chance things will be different this summer, depending,” Rose conceded. “But people on the bill for 2020 included Erica Falls, Jeffery Miller, Chez Pierre, James Williams, Max Moran; we had a great list of artists slated for 2020, and we’re trying to get them all to come back for 2021.”

Laughing, Rose said, “I do know that I am definitely going to be there.”

A fourth generation drummer himself, Rose describes the Swiss festival as, “About the same amount of days as JazzFest, but it’s more like a smaller version of French Quarter Fest, in terms of the crowd: maybe 50 or 60,000 people over the course of ten days. It all happens in a beautiful 15th century town in the Alps, on a piazza on Lake Maggiore, so there is that water vibe like festivals along the Mississippi. There are seven stages and restaurants and nightclubs with music from one end of the piazza to the other.”

Though one might hear “Alps” and picture snow, Rose claimed June and July in Switzerland aren’t that different from summer on the Gulf Coast.

“It’s in the lower part of the Alps, which borders Italy, so the weather’s actually nice most of the year,” Rose promised. “But in the summer, the weather gets pretty hot! In 2019, the festival was during a heatwave where it was 100 degrees every day! It wasn’t as humid as New Orleans, but it gets warm.” But as in New Orleans, Rose said, the heat is made up for by the amazing music.

Rose said he is psyched for this new musical challenge: “It’s kind of cool to be able to bring the music to Switzerland, and the culinary aspect – they usually bring a chef over every year. I’m also trying to expand it, bringing new artists over, and some [Black] Indians over, just growing the program over a certain amount of years. This festival is actually pretty hip: 200 shows over 10 days. You can go see Leroy Jones with his band, then walk over and watch Gerald French or Shannon Powell. Germaine Bazzle has performed at it, Irma Thomas, Nicholas Payton, so many great musicians. Plus, they have brass band parades twice a day. It’s really hip, and you really do get a real taste of New Orleans.”

More information about JazzAscona is available online at www.jazzascona.ch/en.

This article originally published in the February 1, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.