Hannibal Lokumbe

Hannibal Lokumbe photo courtesy Meet The Composer

In an effort to develop audiences and foster greater participation and appreciation for the arts in New Orleans' African-American community, jazz composer/trumpeter Hannibal Lokumbe will work with two of the city's major arts organizations -- the Contemporary Arts Center and Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. Mr. Lokumbe's activities will provide a link between the Contemporary Arts Center, the Louisiana Philharmonic, and New Orleans's various ethnic and racial communities, in the city known as the birthplace of jazz.

Mr. Lokumbe's residency will consist of two major initiatives: "Pathways to Connections" and "The Wheel of Life Project." "Pathways" will bring Mr. Lokumbe into direct contact with the city's African-American community through a series of education programs and performances of his composition, "African Portraits." "The Wheel of Life Project" will take Mr. Lokumbe out of the concert hall and into a variety of the city's ethnic communities. He will perform regularly with church choirs, such as the Christian Unity Baptist Church, mentor young jazz artists at the Street Academy of St. Mark's Community Center, and participate in a variety of events sponsored by the Louisiana Division of the Arts.

Hannibal Lokumbe's music has been informed by the spirituals he heard in the cotton fields of Texas where he once worked, to the drums of the Masai, with whom he lived in Africa. The well-traveled jazz musician, who plays regularly at the world's major jazz festivals, has collaborated with T. Bone Walker, Jackie Wilson, Roy Haynes, Elvin Jones, among many others. Mr. Lokumbe, who received a Grammy nomination for his Children of the Fire, has composed more than 150 compositions from string quartets and symphonies, to operas and masses. His works have been performed by the Kronos Quartet and by such orchestras as the Baltimore Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Saint Louis Symphony. Mr. Lokumbe is also the author of a book of inspirational poems -- the Ripest of My Fruit -- and a play, Diary of An African America. Most recently, he was commissioned by the Abyssinian Baptist Church to compose a mass, which he has entitled Eternal.