Jazz Fest 2012

Porch Song: A Portrait of Trombone Shorty
By Terrance Osborne

Trombone Shorty’s 2010 breakthrough album, Backatown, led to his first Grammy® Award nomination, an international tour and multiple network television appearances. Major media critics point to him as the embodiment of New Orleans’ irreplaceable culture and its varied and eternally appealing musical magic. Andrews proves that New Orleans’ contributions to the arts remain vital and are not bound up in strictly traditional forms. To see Trombone Shorty perform is to experience the once-in-a-generation thrill that those who saw Buddy Bolden invent jazz must have experienced. Andrews brings an instrument typically relegated to a supporting role up front and imbues it with dynamic authority. Indeed, Trombone Shorty’s invigorating, genre-blurring exposition of New Orleans’ deep culture is a thrilling commentary on the irresistible nature of the city’s contemporary arts.

As Andrews was evolving toward iconic representation of New Orleans’s music, Terrance Osborne was absorbing and exploring the City’s visual heritage. Resembling what Trombone Shorty does with music, Osborne transmutes that core into a freshly muscular American figurative painting that advances an aesthetic last brushed by Thomas Hart Benton – albeit passed through the soulful prism of America’s most fascinating city. His contrapuntal palette enhances slightly surreal forms and impossible juxtapositions. The intuitive manner in which he illuminates his canvases has earned him a place in the esteemed line of notable figurative artists to be inspired by New Orleans. This work shows Osborne maturing into a highly confident and singular artist. His golden dawn setting imagines Trombone Shorty on the porch of his old house in Treme, rousing the City with his horn.  The 2012 Jazz Fest poster captures two authentically significant New Orleans cultural trajectories at once, framing the simultaneous ascendency of Trombone Shorty’s music and Terrance Osborne’s art. 

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Image ©2012 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, Inc. / Text ©2012 ProCreations Publishing Company