Band Travel: New Orleans
Sounds of the Second Line
Why New Orleans for Bands?
There may be no better city in America for a band to simply walk outside and find itself surrounded by music. In New Orleans, brass bands move through the streets, jazz pours out of doorways, and a Second Line can turn your students from visitors into part of the celebration. This is a place where band music feels alive, social, loud, and completely connected to the city around it.
That energy gives students a new way to understand the music they already play. They can learn from New Orleans musicians, trace the roots of jazz, hear traditions passed from one generation to the next, and then bring some of that sound and spirit into their own performance. New Orleans doesn’t feel like a music lesson dressed up as a trip. The city itself becomes the lesson.
Performance Possibilities
Second Line Parade
Don’t just watch a Second Line. Put the band in one. Student Adventures handles the permits, police coordination, and advance logistics, so the director can focus on the students and the music. Your ensemble takes to the streets and becomes part of one of New Orleans’ most recognizable traditions, with the city itself becoming the performance route.
Mardi Gras Krewe Parade
For a marching band, this is the big one. Major Mardi Gras parades fill the streets with enormous floats, crowds, and some of the strongest marching bands in the region. Participation is serious business and varies by krewe, with invitations or selections made well in advance. Out-of-state ensembles do appear, but this is an opportunity a band earns rather than simply books.
Krewe of BOO! Halloween Parade
Halloween in New Orleans gets the full Mardi Gras treatment after dark. Marching bands move through the city at night beneath the lights, surrounded by floats, costumes, crowds, and that unmistakable New Orleans parade energy. For a fall trip, it is one of the most fun and visually unforgettable ways to put the band right in the middle of the action.
The National WWII Museum
Set up in the Museum’s wide-open outdoor space and let the band draw a crowd. With visitors moving through one of New Orleans’ biggest attractions, the ensemble gets a highly visible public performance setting with plenty of room to play and an audience already built into the experience.
Oscar Dunn Park Amphitheater
Take the stage directly across from Jackson Square with St. Louis Cathedral rising behind the band and the French Quarter moving all around you. It is a spectacular New Orleans backdrop for an outdoor concert and the kind of setting that makes even a familiar piece feel completely different.
New Orleans Jazz Museum
If you are going to play jazz in New Orleans, this is one heck of a place to do it. Housed in the historic Old U.S. Mint between the French Quarter and Frenchmen Street, the Jazz Museum puts students inside a place devoted to the music and musicians that helped define the city.
Steamboat NATCHEZ Dockside
The river, the steamboat, and a crowd waiting to board create a performance setting that could only happen in New Orleans. Student bands have performed on the NATCHEZ dock, giving the ensemble a built-in audience before passengers head out onto the Mississippi. With the river rolling behind them and one of the city’s most iconic steamboats at the dock, this is pure New Orleans.
Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park
Take the band right to the Mississippi River with the French Quarter just steps away and riverboats moving behind the performance. This is New Orleans in full view: music, water, city energy, and a public audience gathering around the sound. It gives students the chance to perform in a setting that feels unmistakably tied to the city.
St. Louis Cathedral
Imagine the band making music inside one of the most recognizable and historic spaces in New Orleans. With its soaring interior, remarkable acoustics, and location overlooking Jackson Square, St. Louis Cathedral can turn the right repertoire into a performance students will remember long after the final note.
New Orleans Musical Legends Park
For a jazz band or smaller combo, this intimate Bourbon Street setting is a perfect fit. Students can perform in a courtyard surrounded by the names and stories of New Orleans music legends, with the close-up atmosphere putting every solo, groove, and interaction right in front of the audience.
New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park
Bring the big band into a setting devoted entirely to the story of New Orleans jazz. Surrounded by the history of the music they are performing, students get the rare chance to play jazz in the city that helped give it a voice, turning the concert into something far more memorable than another stop on the itinerary.
Mardi Gras World
Perform surrounded by the color, scale, and spectacle of Mardi Gras itself. Student ensembles can play among the enormous floats and larger-than-life creations built for Carnival season, making this a visually unforgettable option even if it is not the most traditional concert setting in the city.
Clinics & Workshops
Kids in the Hall at Preservation Hall
Step inside one of the most important rooms in American music and hear New Orleans jazz where generations of musicians have kept it alive. Students experience a live Preservation Hall performance, discover the stories behind the music, and talk directly with musicians about the sound, history, and traditions they have inherited. It turns jazz history from something in a textbook into something sitting a few feet away.
Loyola University Band Clinic
Bring your own repertoire into the rehearsal room and let a Loyola faculty member hear the ensemble with completely fresh ears. Students can dig deeper into sound, balance, phrasing, and musical decision-making while experiencing the level of focus expected in collegiate music. In a city overflowing with musical tradition, this gives the band dedicated time to work on its own sound.
Tulane University Band Clinic
New Orleans may be famous for jazz, but great ensemble playing starts with the same fundamentals your students work on every day. A Tulane clinic lets the band sharpen its own repertoire with university faculty while giving students a glimpse of music-making on a major college campus in the middle of one of America’s great music cities.
Steamboat NATCHEZ Jazz Band Workshop
Work directly with musicians who make New Orleans jazz their profession. The band from the Steamboat NATCHEZ can take students inside the style, rhythm, articulation, improvisation, and ensemble communication that give this music its unmistakable character. Afterward, hearing those same musicians perform on the river means students are listening for things they would never have noticed before.
Court of Two Sisters Jazz Brunch Q&A
Hear professional jazz musicians at work while New Orleans brunch unfolds around you, then turn the tables and ask them the questions. Students can talk with the musicians about improvisation, repertoire, working as an ensemble, and what it means to make a living performing jazz in the city where the tradition grew up. It is part meal, part performance, and part backstage conversation.
Preservation Hall Brass Band Workshop
This is where students can get inside the sound that spills into the streets of New Orleans. Working with musicians rooted in the brass-band tradition, they explore the groove, articulation, ensemble interaction, and musical personality that make this style instantly recognizable. For a concert or marching band, it is a chance to discover just how differently familiar instruments can speak.
Traditional New Orleans Jazz Clinic
New Orleans jazz asks musicians to listen differently. Instead of every answer coming from the printed page, students explore collective improvisation, style, phrasing, and the give-and-take that lets an ensemble create in the moment. It is a completely different musical conversation from a traditional concert-band rehearsal and one that belongs naturally in this city.
University of New Orleans Jazz Studies Masterclass
UNO puts students inside a jazz program shaped by the musical legacy of New Orleans itself. A masterclass can push young musicians beyond simply playing the right notes and into improvisation, style, communication, and the confidence to make individual musical choices. For jazz students especially, working here connects what happens in school rehearsal to a living professional tradition.
NOCCA Jazz Masterclass
Some of the biggest names to come out of New Orleans music began as students at NOCCA. Working in that environment lets young musicians see what serious artistic training can look like at their own age while exploring jazz with faculty and student artists immersed in the city’s musical culture. It is inspiring precisely because the people making the music do not feel impossibly far ahead of them.
Beyond the Stage
New Orleans keeps going long after the instruments are packed away. Cruise the Mississippi, explore Mardi Gras World, walk through Tremé, head into the bayou, or spend an evening surrounded by art and music on Frenchmen Street. Every part of the city adds another layer of culture, history, and personality to the trip.
French Quarter & Jackson Square
This is the New Orleans students came to see. Street musicians, artists, iron balconies, historic buildings, and the constant movement of the French Quarter surround Jackson Square with energy. Give the group time to explore and they quickly discover that some of the best moments in New Orleans happen simply by turning the next corner.
Steamboat NATCHEZ Jazz Dinner Cruise
See New Orleans the way generations of travelers have: from the Mississippi River. Enjoy dinner aboard the NATCHEZ while the city skyline drifts past and live jazz fills the boat. Between the paddlewheel, the river traffic, the food, and the music, the entire evening feels unmistakably New Orleans.
Mardi Gras World
Get close enough to Mardi Gras to see just how enormous it really is. Students walk among towering floats, giant props, and larger-than-life creations while seeing how the spectacle is designed and built. Add a hands-on mask-making experience, and they can take a little bit of Carnival creativity home with them.
The National WWII Museum
One of the country’s most impressive museums pulls students into the story of World War II through enormous artifacts, immersive exhibits, and powerful personal stories. Beyond All Boundaries, the museum’s 4D cinematic experience, surrounds the audience with sound, effects, archival footage, and narration that brings the scale and emotion of the war vividly to life.
Tremé Walking Tour
Walk through one of the most important neighborhoods in the history of American music and Black culture. In Tremé, students encounter the places and stories behind Congo Square, jazz funerals, brass bands, Mardi Gras Indians, civil rights, and generations of musicians who changed American music. It can be one of the most powerful experiences of the trip because the history is not behind glass. Students are standing where it happened.
Swamp or Airboat Adventure
Trade city streets for cypress trees, open water, and Louisiana wildlife. An airboat or swamp tour gets students deep into the bayou, where alligators, wetlands, and a completely different side of Louisiana take over. It is fast, loud, wild, and usually one of the biggest crowd-pleasers of the trip.
French Quarter Ghost Tour
New Orleans gets wonderfully strange after dark. Follow a guide through the historic Quarter while stories of hauntings, legends, disasters, vampires, and some truly colorful former residents unfold around the very buildings where they supposedly happened. It is history with just enough creepy thrown in.
Frenchmen Street Night Market
When the sun goes down, Frenchmen Street lights up with live music, local art, and the creative side of New Orleans. Students can browse the outdoor Frenchmen Art Bazaar, see work from local artists, and soak up the sound spilling out of the surrounding music venues. It feels less like an attraction and more like stepping directly into the city’s nightlife.
JAMNOLA
Jump into an interactive celebration of New Orleans music, culture, and Mardi Gras. Students move through colorful, hands-on exhibits created with local artists, discovering the people, traditions, food, art, and sounds that give the city its personality. There is plenty to touch, explore, photograph, and learn, making this one of the most playful ways to understand what makes New Orleans New Orleans.
Audubon Zoo or Aquarium
Give the itinerary a completely different kind of adventure. Spend time among giraffes, big cats, primates, and Louisiana wildlife at the Audubon Zoo, or head downtown for sharks, penguins, stingrays, and marine life at the Aquarium. Either choice gives students room to explore and a fun break from the city’s historic attractions.
Louis Armstrong Park & Congo Square
Stand in a place that helped shape the sound of American music. Congo Square carries centuries of history tied to music, dance, African traditions, and community, while Armstrong Park celebrates one of New Orleans’ most legendary musicians. For young performers, this is more than a photo stop. It puts them physically inside the story of the music they play.
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
Enter one of New Orleans’ famous “Cities of the Dead,” where rows of above-ground tombs create a landscape found in few other American cities. Stories of Marie Laveau, Homer Plessy, historic families, and New Orleans burial traditions turn the cemetery into one of the city’s most fascinating history lessons, with just enough mystery to make sure everyone is listening.
Ways to Shape the Trip
Join the Second Line
Make the streets your stage. Center the trip on a Second Line, Mardi Gras krewe parade, or Krewe of BOO!, then add a brass-band workshop, Mardi Gras World, and the neighborhoods where these traditions grew. It is loud, celebratory, and about as far from a standard concert tour as you can get.
Where Jazz Was Born
Build the trip around the music that made New Orleans famous. Work with local jazz musicians, experience Preservation Hall, dig into traditional New Orleans style, hear the NATCHEZ band, visit the Jazz Museum, and spend time on Frenchmen Street. This is the trip for a band that wants to come home hearing jazz differently.
Big Easy, Big Stage
Put performance at the center with one of New Orleans’ unforgettable venues, whether that means the National WWII Museum, Oscar Dunn Park, the riverfront, St. Louis Cathedral, or another public setting. Pair it with a university clinic and professional music experiences, then let the city provide the backdrop.
Let the Good Times Roll
For the group that wants a little bit of everything. Perform, work with New Orleans musicians, cruise the Mississippi, explore the French Quarter, head into the swamp, experience Mardi Gras culture, and save room for ghosts, jazz, and beignets somewhere along the way. This is the full New Orleans experience with the band still at the heart of it.
Ready to Bring Your Band to New Orleans?
Bring the band to the city that taught America how to move. We can build the performances, clinics, history, food, and only-in-New-Orleans moments around the sound and goals of your program.
Availability note: Performance opportunities, clinics, workshops, festivals, parades, and special events vary by destination and are subject to availability, eligibility, ensemble size, season, technical requirements, and final approval.
Photo credits: Jackson Square & St. Louis Cathedral by Spatms (CC BY-SA 4.0); Second Line Parade by Derek Bridges (CC BY 2.0); Mardi Gras Krewe Parade by Mobilus In Mobili (CC BY-SA 2.0); Krewe of BOO! Halloween Parade by Sydney Byrd, for US National Park Service (Public domain); New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park by Hunter Miles Davis for NPS (Public domain); Frenchmen Street Night Market by Jeremy Thompson (CC BY 4.0); JAMNOLA by Juancabrera21 (CC0); Audubon Zoo or Aquarium by Gary J. Wood (CC BY-SA 2.0); Louis Armstrong Park & Congo Square by Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD (CC BY-SA 4.0); St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 by Cory Doctorow (CC BY-SA 2.0); Oscar Dunn Park Amphitheater by Bernard Spragg. NZ from Christchurch, New Zealand (CC0); Goldring Woldenberg Riverfront Park by Infrogmation of New Orleans (CC BY-SA 4.0); Mardi Gras World by acedout (CC BY-SA 2.0). Via Wikimedia Commons.