New Orleans Jazz & Blues Market reborn with ambitious roster of national jazz artists 

New Orleans Jazz & Blues Market reborn with ambitious roster of national jazz artists 

A new leadership team has toiled for months to get the Jazz Market’s affairs in order and upgrade the facility.  

BY KEITH SPERA | Staff writer 

Oct 3, 2025 

Bill Frisell, one of the world’s most acclaimed jazz guitarists, was puzzled. 

At the conclusion of the first of his two Oct. 1 shows at the rebranded, reengineered and reborn New Orleans Jazz & Blues Market, Frisell strummed one last chord – and produced only silence. His electric guitar had gone dead. 

“Now I have to fumble around up here,” he announced as the audience awaited his encore, “and figure out what’s going on.” 

Soon enough, Frisell’s guitar came back to life, and the music resumed. 

Just as it has at the Jazz & Blues Market. 

The multi-million-dollar Central City music venue, originally designed and built as a home for the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, has been mostly dark and dormant since 2024. 

It never regained its footing after the orchestra’s former leaders, Irvin Mayfield and Ronald Markham, pled guilty in 2020 to a federal charge of improperly transferring more than $1 million in public library donations to the orchestra, then fabricating records to hide it. 

In the ensuing years, the building and the business fell into disarray. Taxes weren’t filed. The liquor license lapsed, as did the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra’s nonprofit status. 

For months, a new leadership team has toiled to get the Jazz Market’s affairs in order and upgrade the facility. 

The results of that effort are finally ready for the public to see, and hear. 

The Jazz & Blues Market boasts new sound and lighting systems, a rebuilt bar and new four-top tables intended to make the 320-capacity space feel more like a jazz club. 

And tickets are on sale for an ambitious slate of shows stretching into next spring. 

Following Frisell and two nearly sold-out nights with pianist Bob James, the Market’s October calendar includes jazz fusion band Yellowjackets, guitarists Larry Carlton and Stanley Jordan and vocalists Morgan James and Lisa Fischer. 

The likes of Acoustic Alchemy, Marcus Miller, Curtis Stigers, Jane Monheit, Kirk Whalum, Kenny Garrett and Lee Ritenour are booked later this year. Local musicians are also in the mix. 

For New Orleans, it’s an unprecedented roster of top-tier modern jazz heavyweights. 

Suzanne Bresette is the well-connected music industry professional charged with orchestrating the Market’s makeover. She’s betting that New Orleanians will embrace an extensive program of touring jazz – and blues – artists in a sonically pristine environment. 

The population is there, Bresette believes. “I just think the population hasn’t had the opportunity to come out and support this level of music.” 

It does now. 

Trouble-shooting 

Bresette spent many years in New York as a consultant and strategist for music clubs and festivals. Among other endeavors, Bresette & Company launched Jimmy’s Jazz & Blues Club in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 2021. 

One night at Jimmy’s, she got into a conversation with Wynton Marsalis, the New Orleans-born trumpeter who has led New York’s Jazz at Lincoln Center for decades. She mentioned her desire to work with a music venue that could also be used for live recordings, much like New York’s Village Vanguard. 

Marsalis suggested she check out what was then called the New Orleans Jazz Market. 

So Bresette traveled to New Orleans, a town she mostly knew from frequent trips to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. 

She thought the space at 1436 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, which first opened in 2015, was “a beautiful room with so much potential. It just needed some loving attention. It was in pretty bad shape.” She approached the board of New Orleans Jazz Orchestra Inc., the nonprofit that owns the venue, about pursuing a makeover and bringing the music back. 

The board, led by new chairman Terrah Green, was “very supportive of the vision and what it could be,” Bresette said. 

They raised approximately $500,000 from donors and investors for the makeover. 

But, as Bresette and Green eventually discovered, the Jazz Market’s problems ran deeper than the facility itself. In the latest upheaval, the board ousted NOJO artistic director Adonis Rose during an emergency meeting on Sept. 27. 

“It is imperative that we put our best foot forward throughout our entire organization so that our leadership closely aligns with our core institutional values, goals and aspirations,” Green said in a news release. 

“Accountability. Oversight. Professionalism. Excellence. These are the pillars upon which we are rebuilding NOJO brick-by-brick.” 

NOJO’s reorganization, Green said in the statement, is “informed by both the humble recognition of our past malfeasances and a strict adherence to best practices moving forward.” 

Construction delays 

The paperwork issues have been, or are nearly, resolved, Bresette said. “That took a lot of time and energy. It has floored me, the situation here. In all my years, I’ve never run into anything like that before. 

“But that won’t happen again. We have the right systems in place so we can be fiscally responsible.” 

The venue’s exterior still bears its original name. But the signage will change after a pending deal for naming rights is finalized. 

Rebuilding the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra as a performing entity is part of the plan. So is fostering educational programs – including partnerships with local universities – and community involvement. 

“We need to build a base of new students to carry on the music,” Bresette said. 

Meanwhile, she tapped into her extensive contacts and friendships throughout the international jazz community to fill in the Market’s calendar. 

“They all love New Orleans, they really do,” she said of the musicians. “That just needed a room to play in that was large enough to support them.” 

The 320-seat Jazz & Blues Market can accommodate acts that need more capacity than the 90-seat Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro on Frenchmen Street or the similarly sized Sweet Lorraine’s on St. Claude Avenue, but for whom the Orpheum and Saenger theaters would be too large. 

The Jazz Market planned to reopen in September. But construction and permitting delays forced the postponement of all September shows, including saxophonist Joshua Redman, who is rescheduled for Feb. 6. 

New Orleans, Bresette came to realize, does not move at New York speed. 

“No, it doesn’t,” she said, laughing. “I have learned that. But we’re glad we waited until we could do it right.” 

“They want to see this happen”

Sound quality can make or break a show. As Monty Python co-founder John Cleese introduced a 50th anniversary screening of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre on Sept. 24, some attendees shouted that they couldn’t hear him. 

There were no such sound issues for Bill Frisell on the Jazz & Blues Market’s opening night. 

Frisell’s distinctive guitar tone rang clear. Rudy Royston’s cymbals sizzled. Gregory Tardy’s tenor sax came across as warm and robust. Thomas Morgan’s upright bass sounded rich and full. 

It was, literally, music to Bresette’s ears. 

In addition to booking the venue, she is also the interim manager overseeing day-to-day operations. That was not initially part of her job description. 

“I’m willing to do it because I believe in what we’re building here,” she said. “Most of these artists, I’m very close to. I wanted to make sure that they have an incredible experience, because then the audience has an incredible experience.” 

The musicians “have shown a tremendous amount of belief and support, because they want to see this happen. 

“They all love New Orleans and have always been mystified why there hasn’t been a room like this.”