New Orleans Premier French Festival
March 25, 2023 | 11am-5pm
Les ReBelles, also known as “The ReBelles,” celebrate the women of New Orleans by connecting them through dance regardless of age, shape and background. We are a mix of professional and amateur dancers who celebrate the historic fight for women’s rights by visiting the different eras when significant progress was made towards “La Liberation de la Femme”. Think 1920’s flapper, 1960’s go-go, turn of the century French Cancan, etc… All that, with a French twist!
More at nolarebelles.com
Inside stage 12:15 1:15
Fun, fresh, and creative, Harmonouche plays music loaded with charisma and international flavor. The New Orleans Gypsy Trad Jazz Band combines world class musicianship and a good dose of humor to deliver a unique sound orchestrated with jazz guitar, diatonic harmonica, singing, whistling and lip trumpeting (Raphaël Bas), accordion and piano (Bart Ramsey), clarinet (Chris Kohl) and saxophone (Pascal Valcasara). Evoking Parisian cobblestoned back alleys, Spanish grottos, and gin joints in the Crescent City, Harmonouche’s smooth blend of world styles energizes audiences and harkens back to old world values in order to captivate and delight.
More on raphaelbas.com/
Main Stage 11:30-12:30
As two musicians involved in the New York swing renaissance, Tatiana Eva-Marie and Adrien Chevalier wanted to share their experience of French jazz with their American audience, and that’s how Avalon Jazz Band was born. Ever since its creation, the band has performed in the hottest clubs and venues in the city, from hidden speakeasies to the Oak Room at the Plaza. In July 2012 they were invited by the French Ambassador to give two private concerts in Washington for the French National Day and represent the expansion of French culture in the United States.
More on avalonjazzband.com
Main Stage 2:45-3:40
A veteran New Orleans musician, former park ranger with the National Park Service (30 years), actor, photographer, book author, former high school biology teacher, former college football All-American, and former NFL player (Kansas City Chiefs). Sunpie Barnes’ many careers have taken him far and wide. He has traveled to over 50 countries playing his own style of what he calls Afro-Louisiana music incorporating blues, zydeco, gospel, Caribbean and African influenced rhythms and melodies. He is a multi-instrumentalist, master accordion and harmonica player, also piano, rubboard, talking drum, and dejembe. He learned accordion from some of the best Zydeco pioneers in Louisiana, including Fernest Arceneaux, John Delafose, and Clayton Sampy. Along with his musical group Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots, he has performed at festivals and concerts across the US and around the globe. Sunpie has recorded 6 critically acclaimed CDs with his compositions currently featured in 16 Hollywood film productions.
In addition to this musical work he is also a current member of the Paul Simon Band and recently finished a 58 city arena tour “Paul Simon and Sting Together”, which span 34 countries (2014-2015). Film acting has also been a important part of his busy career. Sunpie’s work has appeared in such Hollywood productions as Point of No Return, Deja Vu, Under Cover Blues, Jonah Hex, Treme, The Big Easy, Skeleton Key, Heartless, The Gates Of Silence and Odd Girl Out.
He is the Big Chief of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang, one of the oldest existing Black Carnival groups in New Orleans. Sunpie is also a active member of the secondline parading organization, Black Men of Labor Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
Main Stage: 4:00-5:00
Lost Bayou Ramblers is a Cajun band who’s evolution continues to excite, challenge, and redefine both genre expectations as well as cultural preconceptions. With 9 albums, a Grammy Nomination, score contributions to the Oscar Nominated Film BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, and support slots with ARCADE FIRE and VIOLENT FEMMES , Lost Bayou continues to swing wide from their Louisiana home base. In 2015 the Ramblers caught the attention World Café, as #1 on “David Dye’s five favorite live music moments in and out of the World Café studio. Their special 2016 release RUE VERMILION REVIVAL, a recording of the very first Lost Bayou Ramblers performance from 1999, is a fundraiser for the historic flooding in August of 2016. Their latest single, Aloha Golden Meadow, is paired with the bands’ first music video which shed’s a surreal but hopeful light on coastal erosion in Louisiana.
Lost Bayou Ramblers is:
Louis Michot – Fiddle and Lead Vocals
Andre Michot – Accordion and Lapsteel
Eric Heigle – Percussion and Vocals
Kirkland Middleton – Drums
Jonny Campos – Guitar and Vocals
Bryan Webre – Bass and Vocals
Inside Stage 1:30-2:30
Thibault grew between mother nurse and a saxophonist father. Family musical preferences are more oriented towards jazz, blues, rock’n’roll, even a few French singers like Leo Ferre or Barbara.
Young, Thibault practiced the piano and drums, then guitar when he began composing his first songs.
He began studying law which will lead him to become a lawyer, occupation he exercised in the Val d’Oise. But all his free time was spent composing and writing texts.
For ten years, he performed with various pop-rock bands as a drummer with COX, PRIVATE JOKE, MUMBLY- distributed by the Marsh Marigold Label, and SEASON (S).
He then created his first band A.D.M. who plays his own compositions.
He thus acquired a solid stage experience and become familiar with the arts by performing in various Parisian venues: The Reservoir, Le Baiser Salé, La Fleche d’Or, and at festivals in France and abroad (SOS Racism, Promotion of Francophone Song of MANS, Hamburg, Brussels and New Orleans). This allows him to become familiar with the art world.
Always looking for new musical experiences, he composed and also wrote for different universe of artists like Julia Martin, backing voice of Menelik, or Taly Heavy Blues Band, composed film scores (“Melting pop” and “L School Heroes “of Darside Ossey) and launched more recently in the production of albums (FOUX,” The dance of the men, “2011; Jon Roniger, New Orleans, 2013). These collaborations allow it to soak up the artist’s sensibility to create an original musical universe.
In 2011, he designed and produced the first album of BREMEN, a duo he formed with his wife, Coralie. Their first album, Ephemeral, is more intimate and full of sensuality and electro sounds. It is also an album of maturity with more personal lyrics. With it, he presents with subtlety and delicacy 14 songs, 14 scenes of life as so many cinematic sequences. These songs are about love, of course, children … but also hot topics, according to its concerns. He worked and saved the party home with his girlfriend but he is also surrounded by friends technicians, musicians who now form his musical family. She helps and supports so that the same confession of Thibault, his passion became his main activity.
Also, always looking for new and now expatriated in New Orleans, he now wants to trace a path towards new horizons…
New Orleans Premier French Festival 