On Sunday, May 5th, the last night of the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival season, a loaded ensemble converged on NOLA’s Toulouse Theatre to take part in an ever-growing tradition: one final round of dance, music, sex, and romance with Purple Party: A Tribute to the Music of Prince.
Led once again by keyboardist Casey Russell (Magic Beans), this latest Purple Party featured a house band comprised of Michelangelo Carubba (drums, Cool Cool Cool), Nate Edgar (bass, The Nth Power), Craig Brodhead (guitar, Cool Cool Cool), DJ Williams (guitar), Chris Brouwers (trumpet, Cool Cool Cool), and Greg Sanderson (saxophone, Cool Cool Cool) alongside a rotating cast of featured vocalists including Shira Elias (vocals, Cool Cool Cool), Sammi Garett (vocals, Cool Cool Cool), Kanika Moore (vocals, Doom Flamingo/TAUK Moore), Lyle Divinsky (vocals), and Erica Falls (vocals)—all of whom had spent the two-weekend Jazz Fest season darting around the Crescent City from gig to gig, often until the night gave way to day. Rinse, repeat…
That didn’t stop them from making this “tour de Prince” a tour de force, each selection more powerful than the last. A bouncing “Musicology” opener fed into a party-starting, Divinsky-led “Partyup”. Shira Elias, dressed in red leather (“The little red corvette herself,” Lyle quipped) jumped in to add some intrigue with a dynamic “Controversy”, then tagged out for Kanika Moore, who ignited a moving duet with Divinsky on “Nothing Compares 2 U”. Lest the crowd forget the band of killers tucked away at the back of the modest stage, Greg Sanderson popped out here for a searing solo, sending the bittersweet love song into the stratosphere.
Moore remained magnetic on a hot and heavy “Head” featuring a nice DJ Williams guitar solo and a fearsome drum-and-bass jam by Carubba and Edgar. Sammi Garret took the reins with Divinsky at her side for striding “Uptown”. Elias returned for an emphatic “Call My Name” replete with an eye-popping Craig Brodhead solo that prompted a slew of “Craig!”-based ad-libs from the vocalists.
Purple Party – “Call My Name” (Prince) – 5/5/24
[Video: Ande Rasmussen]
The great Erica Falls (“One might call her the Queen of Jazz Fest,” Elias beamed) graced the stage toward the middle of the set to helm a trio of classics including “I Feel For You”—a song Shira and Erica had notably sung together on this same stage 11 days/a Jazz Fest lifetime prior as part of Live For Live Music & GMP Live’s Chaka Khan tribute on night 1.
The party even expanded—as this annual Jazz Fest finale tends to do—to include surprise sit-ins by guitarist Xavier Lynn (Ledisi, Ghost-Note, MonoNeon, Jon Cleary), vocalist Collin Miller (The Brother Nature, Nigel Hall), drummer/percussionist Collin O’Brien (Neal Francis), and Kevin Cooper (Ike Turner, Ravi Shankar) as the show wound through a smooth “She’s Always In My Hair”, a down-and-dirty “Soft and Wet”, an extended “Erotic City” dance party, an electrifying “D.M.S.R.”, a soothing “Purple Rain”, and a “1999” encore with a funky, spur-of-the-moment outro jam that had the whole band jumping and turning and laughing in unison.
A similar rhythm persisted throughout the show: The ensemble would set up the weary but unwavering New Orleans crowd with a vibrant rendering of a Prince hit or deep cut, the talented voices in the house would knock them down, a soloist would capture lightning in a bottle, the rest of the band would react along with the audience, and the collective energy in the Toulouse would grow stronger still. While the music of Prince was the matter at hand on that final night, it was the joy, humor, and affection between the Jazz Fest late-night warriors onstage that became the highlight of the performance.
That exchange of energy was never more apparent than on a Divinsky-led “Adore” late in the show. As he explained over the song’s introduction, this was a hard song to sing, and his voice was tired, and “it might be horrible,” but he was going to throw everything he had left into it—one last blast before “it’s almost Jazz Fest” once again. He wasn’t lying. The singer blazed through the ballad’s falsetto with abandon, let the music take him to the floor, let inhibition fall by the wayside to throw his whole being into the performance. After howling his final notes—quite literally into the face of Craig Brodhead, who visibly fought back laughter over the scene—Divinsky downed his drink, gave the crowd a wave, and walked offstage, allowing the grinning band to play on behind him.
‘Til next time, Jazz Fest. To borrow a line from the Purple One, “Love is too weak to define what you mean to me.”
Below, check out the setlist from the New Orleans Jazz Fest 2024 edition of Purple Party: A Tribute to the Music of Prince and view a selection of videos from the show. Stay tuned for more Purple Party announcements coming soon.
Setlist: Purple Party: A Tribute to the Music of Prince | Toulouse Theatre | New Orleans, LA | 5/5/24
Set: Musicology, Partyup, Controversy, Nothing Compares 2 U, Head, Uptown, Call My Name, Kiss, I Feel For You, I Wanna Be Your Lover, She’s Always In My Hair, Adore, Soft and Wet, Erotic City, D.M.S.R., Purple Rain
Encore: 1999
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