The New Orleans Jazz & Blues Market is calling in some of the city's biggest musical names to help finish rebuilding one of Central City's most storied stages. On September 12, the 370-seat listening room at 1436 Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard will host Groove for Good: A Celebration of Music and Community, a benefit concert featuring Kermit Ruffins, DJ Soul Sister, Donald Harrison, Shannon Powell and a lineup of other local performers, with proceeds earmarked for youth education, workforce training, community music programs and capital improvements.
According to New Orleans CityBusiness, the nonprofit venue is working to complete what it describes as the final phase of an initiative to restore and expand its programming, including finishing a recording and streaming facility on-site. The evening, set to begin at 8 p.m., will be co-hosted by actor and musician Harry Shearer alongside singer, songwriter and pianist Judith Owen. Both are longtime New Orleans residents and musical collaborators who frequently lead local charity initiatives, according to OffBeat Magazine.
The performer lineup also includes David Torkonowski, Bill Summers, Tonya Boyd-Cannon, Herlin Riley and Jamison Ross, with additional acts still expected to be announced. Community youth programs Girls Play Trumpets Too and New Voices New Orleans are also scheduled to participate, tying the fundraiser directly to the venue's education mission. The event, which was originally scheduled for March 14, 2026, was rescheduled to September 12 with general admission and ticket packages starting around $170 for an evening of performances and a silent auction, per NIGHTOUT.
A Rebrand and a Renovation
The benefit builds on changes already underway at the venue, which rebranded from the New Orleans Jazz Market to the New Orleans Jazz & Blues Market in October 2025. The shift broadened the venue's artistic focus beyond jazz while accompanying a physical overhaul of its listening room, including a new RCF audio system, Chauvet Pro lighting and renovated seating, as reported by Where Y'at Magazine.
Interim Manager Suzanne Bresette of Bresette & Company has directed venue operations and event bookings since joining the project in December 2024. Bresette, a music industry consultant, previously helped launch Jimmy's Jazz and Blues Club in New Hampshire before taking on the Central City venue's administrative revival, the outlet's report notes.
A Building With a Complicated Past
The 14,000-square-foot building carries a long history in Central City. It was originally constructed in 1848 as the Dryades Market, repurposed for retail in the 1970s, and ultimately transformed in 2015 into the venue's current form, earning LEED Gold environmental certification in the process. The venue opened in April 2015 as the permanent home of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra.
That early promise was upended when co-founders Irvin Mayfield and Ronald Markham were convicted in federal court in November 2021 for illegally diverting more than $1.3 million from the New Orleans Public Library Foundation, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Under their sentences, the pair received 18-month prison terms, were ordered to pay $1.12 million in restitution, and were required to complete 500 hours of free youth music instruction in New Orleans, per WWL-TV.
Rebuilding the Resident Orchestra
The venue's current reorganization aims to fully reactivate the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, the resident 18-piece big band that has been led since January 2017 by Grammy Award-winning drummer and Artistic Director Adonis Rose, according to DownBeat Magazine. The orchestra's pedigree predates its Central City home: it won a 2010 Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble for its album Book One, well before the venue's 2015 opening.
The Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard corridor itself has faced its own infrastructure challenges in recent years. In September 2024, an abandoned two-story building collapsed nearby, underscoring the redevelopment pressures facing the commercial strip where the venue sits. No injuries were reported in that incident.
With Groove for Good, organizers are betting that a night built around Ruffins, Powell, Harrison and a roster of local legends can push the venue's rebuild across the finish line, funding not just the recording and streaming facility but the youth programs meant to carry the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra's legacy forward.
