Irvin Mayfield: Jazz messenger

When Congress appointed Irvin Mayfield as Cultural Ambassador of the City of New Orleans back in 2003, it seemed no more than a ceremonial footnote on the résumé of an aspiring young trumpeter, and another cog in the public relations machinery of the Big Easy.

Then Hurricane Katrina happened. Like dozens of others, his father, Irvin Sr., was reported missing in the storm. Months later, his body was found on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans. He had drowned.

In the wake of that searing tragedy, Irvin Mayfield demonstrated how seriously he took that ambassadorship. When his 17-member New Orleans Jazz Orchestra comes to Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis on Friday night, it will play a Mayfield composition, "May His Soul Rest in Peace," that "is about my dad and the other victims of Katrina," he said. "But Katrina is not an overwhelming aspect of our show.

"We are trying to bring you the authentic American experience of what New Orleans was, is and is going to be -- a taste of the French Quarter, a dance of gumbo, the smell of jazz! This isn't Preservation Jazz Hall, and this music isn't preserved; it's alive. That's not to say we don't nod to Jelly Roll [Morton] and Louis Armstrong, but this is all original material, with each song written for a specific individual in the band. We've got strong clarinets and trombones. We've got five trumpets.

"This is passionate, celebratory music. This is about there being an uptown way and a downtown way to play the tambourine, and if the two styles come together, there might be a fight. This is our indigenous music, our way of life, and we want to present it to you honestly."

In other words, Mayfield has no time for martyrdom. Before the waters of Katrina had fully receded, he gave an interview on National Public Radio. "I said we needed to go back in and rebuild this city, do whatever you do. The politicians have to politic, the massage therapists have to give massages and the artists have to create."

In November 2005, his performance of a commissioned composition, "All the Saints at Christ Church Cathedral," was hailed as the symbolic reopening of New Orleans. He has gone on to become a board member not only of the city's Arts Council, but the Police and Justice Foundation, the First Responders Fund and the New Orleans Public Library Foundation.

Knocking on the door

To those who know Mayfield, 30, none of this whirlwind is surprising. The small, lithe trumpeter has always been purposeful and precocious, comporting himself much as he dresses and plays his instrument, with impeccable precision.

He met Marsalis at age 9 when he boldly knocked on the pianist's door and asked to be heard. While in high school, he founded a brass band that toured Mexico and Europe. Barely out of his teens, he co-founded the Afro-Caribbean sextet Los Hombres Calientes.

A decade later, he remembers the Twin Cities as one of the first places to embrace the band.

"Minneapolis broke me in as an artist by their reaction to Los Hombres," he enthused. "It is my home away from home, Minneapolis and St. Paul. During my collaboration with Gordon Parks, I learned to love St. Paul even more through his eyes," he said of "The Half-Past Autumn Suite," his 2001 musical tribute to the photographer and director of "Shaft" who spent his formative years in St. Paul.

And for those who can't make the NOJO performance, Mayfield will return to Minneapolis March 26-27 to play at the Dakota. He's excited not only because Los Hombres Calientes was such a hit at the Dakota's old St. Paul location, but because of the special nature of the March event. He'll be in town for the Public Library Association convention, where, as board chairman for the New Orleans Public Library, he'll be staffing a booth and announcing plans for a new billion-dollar library he claims will be "the largest in the history of America." The Dakota gigs will celebrate that announcement and reunite Mayfield with Los Hombres co-founder Jason Marsalis and other musicians to be determined.