L’Arrivée: Three Firsts in the Vieux Carré

Wednesday, February 28, 2024
St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter
Concert - 7:30 p.m. | Pre-concert talk - 6:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public

Musical Louisiana: America’s Cultural Heritage, presented annually by The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, is both a concert for music lovers and an educational experience for students.

The 16th edition of this program will revive three significant bodies of work that arrived and were performed in New Orleans prior to statehood, a celebration of three firsts in the Vieux Carré. This concert will highlight rarely performed selections from materials found within The Historic New Orleans Collection archives: the Ursuline Music Manuscript (1736), André Grétry's opera Silvain (1770), and Francois Devienne’s Les Visitandines (1792). Conducted by LPO Music Director and Principal Conductor Matthew Kraemer, this program will feature the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra in collaboration with two virtuosic chamber ensembles that specialize in early music repertoire: Variant 6 and Filament.

Matthew Kraemer will deliver a preconcert talk just prior to the program at 6:30 p.m. at St. Louis Cathedral.

Concert Livestream

Can’t make it? The concert will be streamed live courtesy of WLAE-TV. Watch the concert live below, or follow this link to view in a separate window.

About Musical Louisiana

Since 2007 Musical Louisiana: America’s Cultural Heritage has been copresented by The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. It was founded by THNOC’s late director of the Williams Research Center, Alfred E. Lemmon, as a free, educational concert for music lovers in New Orleans and throughout the state.

Dedicated to the study of Louisiana’s contributions to the world of classical music, the award-winning series reaches an audience of more than 30,000 individuals through live radio broadcasts and online video streaming of the concert. In addition, the accompanying program is distributed to the sixty-eight library systems of the State Library of Louisiana, university libraries, music history instructors in Louisiana, and centers throughout the United States concentrating on the study of American music.

Since the program’s inception, Musical Louisiana has garnered both local and national recognition. The 2008 presentation, “Music of the Mississippi,” won the Big Easy Award for Arts Education; “Made in Louisiana” (2009) received an Access to Artistic Excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; “Identity, History, Legacy: La Société Philharmonique” (2011) received an American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius grant from the National Endowment for the Arts; and “Envisioning Louisiana” (2013) won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support its educational component. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation made possible the streaming of the 2012, 2013, and 2014 concerts. The 2014 program, “Postcards from Paris,” attracted viewers in ten countries and reached 26,000 listeners through public radio broadcasts.

Support

We invite you to support the Musical Louisiana series through a voluntary donation. More information is available by calling (504) 598-7109.

Read what THNOC reads with the Fine Print Book Club (FPBC)! Join us as we read books related to the history of New Orleans and the Gulf South, then participate in the virtual book discussions with staff, authors, and fellow readers.

The FPBC is an informal learning program intended to promote dialogue and connections within our community through shared reading. Books and topics vary from popular to academic, and each reading will center upon building and reevaluating our knowledge of history and culture. The schedule will be announced well in advance so that everyone has plenty of time to read the book.

Participation in the Fine Print Book Club is free, and attendees are expected to obtain their own copy of each title, and registration is required. Sessions will be conducted on Zoom, and the meeting link will be distributed to registrants via email the day prior. 

Please email BookClub@hnoc.org for more information on the Fine Print Book Club.

CALENDAR

SEPTEMBER

Josie Arlington's Storyville: The Life and Times of a New Orleans Madam by Marita Woywod Crandle
Virtual discussion with the author Wednesday, September 21, 2022, at 7 p.m. CDT
Admission is free. | Registration is required.
This program will take place online via Zoom.

REGISTER NOW BUY THE BOOK

The next Fine Print Book Club selection is Josie Arlington’s Storyville: The Life and Times of a New Orleans Madam (2020) by local author, entrepreneur, and French Quarter resident Marita Crandle. Marita will join participants for the discussion on September 21. 

In her book, Crandle charts Josie’s rise as a Storyville madam while painting a vivid picture of the New Orleans red-light district. During the research phase of her writing process, Marita worked with Senior Reference Associate Bobby Ticknor at THNOC’s Williams Research Center. Bobby will open the September 21 session with a slideshow highlighting THNOC’s archival materials related to Storyville.  

The paperback edition of Josie Arlington’s Storyville is available at The Shop at The Collection for $23.99. Participants might also be interested in THNOC’s 2017 publication Guidebooks to Sin: The Blue Books of Storyville, New Orleans. Remember, current THNOC members receive a 10% discount on all purchases at THNOC’s museum store. 

About the author
Marita and her husband Steve run three French Quarter businesses: the Boutique du Vampyre; Potions, a private speakeasy; and the New Orleans Vampire Café. Marita has a passion for animals and has rescued over 650 dogs since moving to the French Quarter, placing all of them in fairytale homes. She and her husband currently live both in the French Quarter and on the Lakefront with their German Shepherd (Zulu) and rescued cockatiel (Voodoo).

We are deeply grateful to have you as a part of the THNOC community. If you are able, we hope you will consider becoming a member or making a donation to help sustain the Fine Print Book Club and programs like it.