Revel in New Orleans music with WWOZ's Piano Night, Monday, April 27th!

Piano Night is a Jazz Fest tradition for many, so during this year's Jazz Festing in Place, WWOZ is bringing us Piano Night on Monday, April 27 at 5pm L.A. time & 7pm NOLA time. Piano Night features Marcia Ball, Jon Cleary, Jojo Herman, Keiko Komaki, Oscar Rossignoli, Kyle Roussel, Josh Paxton, and Joe Krown. The featured pianists are capturing their peformance in their homes, and sending them to WWOZ. Hosts Cole Williams and Missy Bowen will work with the 'OZ video team to weave them together into one stellar night of music for you, where WWOZ Piano Night From Our Homes to Yours will be streaming via WWOZ's Facebook page, on their YouTube channel, and on WWOZ.org. While Piano Night is still a benefit for WWOZ, this year there are no tickets required.

We may not be able to gather together for Piano Night this year, but we can still revel in New Orleans piano thanks to this incredible lineup of pianists playing from their homes to yours!

Happy Birthday, Marcia Ball!

Blues singer and pianist Marcia Ball was born on March 20, 1949, in Orange, Texas, and was raised in Vinton, Louisiana. Ball was born into a musical family and started piano lessons when she started school, showing an early interest in the New Orleans style piano playing of Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, and James Booker. Irma Thomas, the “Soul Queen of New Orleans” was Ball’s chief vocal inspiration. While at Louisiana State University in the 1960s, Ball played in a band called Gum, and in 1970, she started a progressive country band called Freda and the Firedogs in Austin, Texas, ultimately beginning her solo career in 1974.

Ball's piano style includes elements of zydeco, swamp blues, Louisiana blues, and boogie woogie. She began her recording career as a solo artist in the 1980s, and her 1998 album, Sing It!, which featured vocalists Irma Thomas and Tracy Nelson, was nominated for a Grammy Award and a Blues Music Award (BMA) for "Best Contemporary Blues Album." Ball received the 1998 Blues Music Award for "Contemporary Female Vocalist of the Year" and "Best Blues Instrumentalist-Keyboards." She was awarded "Contemporary Blues Album of the Year" for her albums Presumed Innocent (2002) and So Many Rivers (2004). The same year she also won "Contemporary Blues Artist of the Year-Female." She won the "Best Blues Instrumentalist-Keyboards" again in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009. The BMA for Keyboards has since been renamed the Pinetop Perkins Piano Player Award and Ball has won it in 2012, 2015, and 2019. Her 2003 release, So Many Rivers, was nominated for a Grammy as were Live! Down The Road (2005) and Peace, Love & BBQ (2008). She was inducted into the Austin Music Hall of Fame in 2018.

On October 25, 2018, Ball was inducted into the Austin City Limits Hall of Fame, where she first appeared during their inaugural season in 1976. She continues to play at nightclubs, particularly in Austin and New Orleans, and performs at music festivals in North America and overseas. Happy birthday to an incredible musician!

Photo by: Lilly M