Thursday April 7th, 2005

This is another image from the vault, a picture I took a few years ago of Henry Schmidt and Helen Ault at the annual Mother's Day New Leviathan Orchestra concert in the French Quarter, a world so removed from the one of the Treme street where Joe Williams was shot down, its hard to believe that all three had something in common: a love for the music. Jazz has a way of bringing people together, of bridging cultural differences and unifying people. In a few weeks more than a hundred thousand of us will get together to celebrate the music at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. I won't forget Joe Williams, or Daniel Breaux, the Cajun dancer who was murdered on Ursulines Street near the Jazz Fest last year, both victims of the violence that pervades our society.