The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival added an extra day this year to host the Rolling Stones on their third attempt to play the Jazz Fest. Prior Fests had them scheduled but between heart issues and pandemics, the Stones appearance was postponed until May 2, 2024.
The typical Fest days included 14 stages (both open-air and/or in massive tents) and a Children’s venue with 5-7 sets each day. There are hundreds of musicians being transported to various venues throughout the day not to mention instruments, equipment, and costumes. It is a huge undertaking and a lot of activity is behind the scenes. The various food, merchandise and craft vendors also have hundreds of chefs, proprietors and artists attending the many booths and small tents. All in all, it is a logistic nightmare, but somehow they manage to make it seem effortless!
Because of the added “Stones” day, there were lots of restrictions placed on the attendees and our tent—Economy Hall—only had three sets in order to comply with the security issues for that day so that all stages were emptied by 4:00 pm. But our sets included Joe Lastie’s New Orleans Sound, Mark Braud’s Jazz Giants, and The New Orleans Jazz Vipers—all fantastic performances. We were not interested in the Festival Stage with the Rolling Stones but many thousands of folks were eager to view the iconic group.
Some of the highlights of the
