New Orleans, October 26-28, 2007
Experts
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John BiguenetAuthor, Robert Hunter Distinguished Professor at Loyola University, New OrleansJohn Biguenet is the author of a number of books, including Oyster, a novel, and The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories (both from Ecco/HarperCollins). His play The Vulgar Soul won the 2004 Southern New Plays Festival and was a featured production in 2005 at Southern Rep Theatre, where it became the best-selling new play in the theater’s history. His latest play, Rising Water, was the winner of the 2006 National New Play Network Commission Award; a selection of the 2006 National Showcase of New Plays; and a 2007 recipient of an Access to Artistic Excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. It has been nominated for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in drama. |
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Gene BourgWriter/EditorGene Bourg has written about New Orleans’ restaurant culture since 1985. His feature articles about food have appeared in numerous magazines, among them Gourmet, Food & Wine, Saveur and Travel + Leisure. He is writer/editor of Ralph Brennan’s New Orleans Seafood Cookbook (Vissi d’Arte Press, December 2007), and has a number of articles in The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 7: Foodways, (University of North Carolina Press, 2007). “Acadiana: Where Cajun Gets Real,” his cover story on Louisiana’s Acadian food culture for Saveur, received a National Magazine Award in 1996. Mr. Bourg has also conducted the Smithsonian Institution’s “A Taste of New Orleans,” an annual three-day dining tour in Washington, D.C. |
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Dr. Anthony BrownComposerPercussionist Ethnomusicologist and Smithsonian Associates Scholar Dr. Anthony Brown has collaborated with numerous musicians, including Max Roach, Sonia Sanchez, Cecil Taylor, Zakir Hussain, and the San Francisco Symphony. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in music (ethnomusicology) from UC Berkeley and a Master of Music degree in jazz performance from Rutgers University. He has served as Curator of American Musical Culture and Director of the Jazz Oral History Program at the Smithsonian Institution (1992-96), and has been a Visiting Professor of Music at UC Berkeley. His latest book, Give the Drummer Some! The Development of Modern Jazz Drumming (University of California Press), will be published in 2008. |
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Leah ChaseChefLeah Chase is an avid art collector and one of New Orleans’ most authoritative purveyors of traditional Creole cuisine. Her rise as a star chef began after her marriage to Dooky Chase, Jr., whose parents opened the original restaurant, Dooky Chase, in 1941. She has appeared on many cooking programs, and frequently speaks on traditional Creole cooking at conferences and seminars. Ms. Chase is one of 75 African-American women featured in the photographic exhibition “I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women in America,” which toured nationally. She is also a recipient of the National Candace Award, an honor presented annually to ten outstanding black women in the United States. |
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Joshua ClarkAuthor of Heart Like Water and Founder of Light of New Orleans PublishingJoshua Clark is the author of Heart Like Water (Simon & Schuster, 2007), an oral history and memoir on surviving Hurricane Katrina and living in its disaster zone. As founder of Light of New Orleans Publishing, Mr. Clark has edited such books as French Quarter Fiction (2003 regional Book of the Year) and the best-selling Southern Fried Divorce. He contributes fiction, travel features, essays and photographs to dozens of newspapers and publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, Louisiana Literature and Time Out: New York. He also runs the KARES writers’ relief fund and covered New Orleans in the hurricane's aftermath for Salon.com and National Public Radio. |
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Alexandra CousteauEnvironmental AdvocateCo-Founder of EarthEcho International Ms. Cousteau continues the environmental work of her late father, Philippe, and grandfather, Jacques-Yves. She advocates the importance of conservation and sustainable management of marine resources for a healthy planet and productive societies. Her mission takes her around the globe as she assumes a leading role in everything from developing environmental education initiatives for local communities, to speaking to heads of state and policymakers about environmental issues. In 2000, she and her brother co-founded the youth-oriented EarthEcho International to further her family’s legacy in science, advocacy and education. Currently, she is focusing on stemming the practice of shark finning through education and conservation initiatives. |
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Dik A. DasoCurator of Modern Military Aircraft, National Air and Space MuseumA retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, Dik Daso logged more than 2,750 flying hours during his career. He has served as an RF-4C Phantom instructor pilot, F-15 Eagle pilot, twice as a T-38 Talon instructor pilot, instructor of history at the USAF Academy, and chief of Air Force doctrine at Headquarters Air Force, Pentagon. Mr. Daso is the author of four books on military history: Architects of American Air Supremacy: Gen. Hap Arnold and Dr. Theodore von Kármán (Air University Press, 1997); Hap Arnold and the Evolution of American Airpower (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000); Doolittle: Aerospace Visionary (Potomac Books, 2003); and U.S. Air Force: A Complete History (Rizzoli International Publications, 2006). |
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Ernest J. GainesWriter-in-Residence Emeritus, University of Louisiana, LafayetteAcclaimed writer and Louisiana native Ernest Gaines sets his novels in the plantations of the Deep South, tackling social issues that were palpable in the thirty years before the civil rights era. He published his first short story in 1956, and since then has written eight books of fiction, including Catherine Carmier, Of Love and Dust, and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. His last novel, A Lesson Before Dying (Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award. Mr. Gaines has also been awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant for writings of "rare historical resonance." In 2000, President Clinton honored him with the National Humanities Medal. |
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J. Richard Gruber, PH.D.Director, The Ogden Museum of Southern ArtDr. Gruber is an esteemed museum director and curator who served at a number of museums prior to joining the Ogden and the University of New Orleans faculty in 1999, including the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia, and the Wichita Art Museum in Kansas. Active as a curator and author, he has published numerous books and catalogues, among them Dunlap: William Dunlap (2006); Missing New Orleans (2005, reprinted 2006); and The Art of the South, 1890-2003, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art (2004). At the Ogden, he also has been the executive producer of four award-winning documentary films produced in association with Stanley Staniski and Staniski Media, Washington, D.C. |
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Fredrick GuessArtist and Gallery OwnerAfter receiving his Fine Arts degree from the American Academy of Art in Chicago in 1975, Fredrick Guess returned to his native Florida to study with renowned artist Marilyn Bendell. He began his painting career as a portraitist in Manhattan, where he lived for nearly five years before returning to Florida to pursue painting and other passions, from real estate to piano repair. Mr. Guess moved to New Orleans in 1997 to operate a gallery/antique store, and began painting full time again in 1999. His French Quarter studio doubles as a retail gallery. The L2 Gallery in Seaside, Florida, also shows his work. |
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Poppy TookerCulinary Activist, Founder of Slow Foods New OrleansA New Orleans native classically trained in the art of cooking, Poppy Tooker has led highly entertaining, information-packed cooking classes for more than 25 years. Her on-camera flair has been viewed around the world in documentary projects, including Savouring the World and Simple Living. In 1999, Ms. Tooker founded the local chapter of the international Slow Food movement, and has been instrumental in reviving endangered local foods, including Creole cream cheese and rice calas. In 2006, she was awarded the first Carlo Petrini Slow Food Leadership Award for her efforts. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Ms. Tooker has worked tirelessly to restore the historic food traditions of New Orleans. |
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Amei WallachArt CriticAuthor Film Maker Amei Wallach has written or contributed to ten books, including Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away (1995) and Gees Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt. Her articles have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Art in America. For many years, she was on-air arts essayist for “The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour” and chief art critic for Newsday and New York Newsday. Ms. Wallach frequently moderates panels and symposiums at museums around the world. The feature-length documentary, Louise Bourgeois: Scenes From A Murder, which she co-directed and produced with the late filmmaker Marion Cajori, will debut next winter. |
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Chris WiltzAuthorA native of New Orleans, Chris Wiltz is the author of five books. Her most recent is The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld, the true story of French Quarter legend Norma Wallace; it was awarded “Book of the Year—2000” by the New Orleans/Gulf South Booksellers Association. Her other four works are novels: The Killing Circle, A Diamond Before You Die, The Emerald Lizard and Glass House, all set in New Orleans. She also co-wrote and co-produced the television documentary Backlash: Race and the American Dream, which is about David Duke and his followers. It first aired on PBS in 1992. |
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Musical Performances By: |
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Donald HarrisonSaxophonist, Singer, ComposerMr. Harrison is the originator of Nouveau Swing, a genre of music that merges acoustic swing with modern R&B, second-line, hip-hop, Mardi Gras Indian music, and reggae rhythms. His smooth jazz recording, “The Power of Cool,” went to the top of Billboard Magazine’s Smooth Jazz and R&B charts, and is considered a classic. He has released two trio recordings with bass innovator Ron Carter and drum innovator Billy Cobham: “Heroes,” a Classic Jazz recording, and “New York Cool,” which was recorded live at the Blue Note in New York City. Mr. Harrison is in the process of recording “3D,” a set of three CDs featuring a different genre of music on each disc. |
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Big Sam's Funky NationTrombonistPresiding over his Funky Nation is Big Sam, formerly the trombonist for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, who blows the funk out of his trombone and refuses to let the audience sit still. Between solos and trombone riffs, Big Sam second-lines (a uniquely New Orleans style of street-dance) and gets the crowd going both in movement and in replies to his call-and-response MC-style. A talented group of jazz-trained musicians makes up the Funky Nation, bringing with them the improv-style associated with jazz and the horn-heavy front section that's the hallmark of big band funk. Theirs, and Big Sam's, exuberant dancing and playing, afford them a rare opportunity to let loose. Big Sam's Funky Nation has undeniable personality, as well as masterful chops. |
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The Congo NationBig Chief Donald Harrison of The Congo Nation in traditional New Orleans masking attire. Harrison designs and hand makes a new suit each year. The tradition rituals can be linked back to Congo Square where African people kept their culture alive. |
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The Mahotella Queens |
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David Batiste & the Gladiators |
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