About NOJO :: Announcements :: Programs :: Archive :: Staff :: Leadership About NOJO To contact us via email - Click Here The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, Inc., a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization, was incorporated in December, 2002 by founder and current artistic director, Irvin Mayfield, the Grammy nominated and Billboard Award winning trumpeter and composer who is the officially appointed Cultural Ambassador for the City of New Orleans. The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra (NOJO) performs and presents educational programs that draw upon the rich musical and cultural traditions of New Orleans. With offices at 7031 Freret Street, on the campus of Tulane University, NOJO is the only major performing and presenting jazz institution based in post-Katrina New Orleans. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans lacked a world-class performing jazz organization capable of supporting, sustaining, promoting, and celebrating jazz's integral value to New Orleans and American culture. Addressing this lack of infrastructure in the birthplace of jazz is NOJO's mission, which now carries greater weight with every passing day in post-Katrina New Orleans. A distinguished nine-member national volunteer Board of Directors sets policy for the professional administrative staff that supports the signature big band as well as jazz trios, quartets, quintets, sextets and other jazz education programming. NOJO's first recording, Irvin Mayfield's original composition for big band titled Strange Fruit (2003), was critically acclaimed in The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune. Significant national performances include concerts at Ravinia, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Congressional Black Caucus, and a monumental performance at Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans of a newly commissioned work, All the Saints, in November, 2005 that marked the first major jazz performance in post-Katrina New Orleans. NOJO's big band international tour, New Orleans: Do You Know What it Means, has expanded audience awareness of the New Orleans cultural experience and its influence upon great American music. Additionally, all NOJO programming and presentations celebrate jazz as an influential contributor to American culture, and serve to remind the world that jazz is the most democratic form of artistic expression.