DON VAPPIE

Don Vappie is a world renown jazz musician and presenter from New Orleans. He leads the Creole Jazz Serenaders, a classic New Orleans jazz orchestra, as well as his various jazz and R&B combos. He has produced and recorded numerous CDs and film sound tracks and is star of the PBS documentary AMERICAN CREOLE: NEW ORLEANS REUNION.

 Known for his virtuosic banjo skills, Don is a stellar bassist, guitarist and vocalist. Add to that his commitment to the cultural creole music of New Orleans he calls "creole jazz".

As an educator, he has participated, presented and/or performed for programs at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Tulane University, Historic New Orleans Collection, NPR, Smithsonian, Appalachian State University and many more. He currently serves as jazz guitar instructor at Loyola University and is  a member of the Loyola Jazz Faculty Combo. He is also an instructor at the Don “Moose” Jamison Heritage School of Music sponsored by the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation. In the span of his 43 year career he has performed with Peggy Lee, Joel Gray, Carol Channing, Danny Barker, Wynton Marsalis, Otis Taylor, Terence Blanchard, Johnny Adams, Eric Clapton, Cheick Hamala Diabate, Bassekou Kouyate (both of Mali), Demma DIa of Sengal, Bette Midler, Ellis Marsalis, Diana Krall and many more. As a headliner, he’s performed at numerous festivals and venues around the world. His transcriptions of early jazz recordings are available from Warner Bros. Publishing and his orchestral arrangements for banjo and orchestra are distributed worldwide on the NAXOS label.

Don Vappie, New Orleans musician/entertainer and teacher, is New Orleans’ top Jazz banjoist and now serves as jazz guitar instructor at Loyola University New Orleans. Honoring the tradition of his predecessor, banjoist Danny barker, Don has kept alive creole songs of New Orleans and has been honored by the Creole Heritage Center as a recipient of the Creole People’s Award for support and recognition of the Creole heritage and culture and by the Louisiana Creole Research Association for his outstanding contribution to the preservation of New Orleans Creole Culture through music and film. He personifies all aspects of the unique melting pot of cultures that is New Orleans, as is evident by the list of artists he’s performed with, including Wynton Marsalis, Eric Clapton, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Peggy Lee, Otis Taylor, Diana Krall, Bette Midler, Preservation Hall and many more. He also embodies the banjo’s evolution from Africa through seamless performances with artists from Mali, Cheick Hamala Diabaté and Bassekou Kouyate; and from Senegal, Demma Dia.

Don can be heard on numerous recordings of his own and various other artists including the classical world where he arranged and orchestrated three of Harry Reser’s classic banjo solo pieces from the 1920s into an orchestral suite entitled the Reser Suite, and was also the soloist for the NAXOS recording with the Hot Springs music Festival Orchestra in which he received critical acclaim as a banjo virtuoso. Don speaks the language of jazz with a New Orleans accent.

Photo by Brad Edelman