No city tugs at my heart quite like New Orleans does.

And nothing says New Orleans like jazz.

I live there as a young reporter working for the Times Pick a New newspaper.

And after work, I'd hang out at Bullets Sports Bar or Sweet Lorraine's listening to some

of the best local jazz musicians and trust me, there were a lot of them.

This year marks the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and covering that tragedy.

I saw firsthand the tension between beauty and pain in New Orleans.

But some beauty is born from suffering.

Few know that better, the New Orleans Jazz legend, Wynton Marcellus.

I went to do that for me, but then to do that for me, but then to do that for me, but then to do it for me, so do it for me.

Wynton Marcellus is an internationally acclaimed musician, composer and teacher.

He's the son of Jazz Great Ellis Marcellus, who died of complications from coronavirus back in April at age 85.

But Wynton is a master in his own right.

Back in 1984, when he was just 22 years old, he won not one, but two Grammy awards, one for Jazz and one for classical music.

In 1997, he became the first Jazz musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for music for his record, Blood on the Fields.

Then, in 2007, he released from the plantation to the penitentiary and it hit number two on the Billboard Jazz charts.

Marcellus is also the artistic director at Jazz Ed Lincoln Center.

That's where, in 2018, he debuted his newest work, The Ever Funky Low Down.

It's a full-length opera, and, like much of Marcellus' work, it's political.

And it's narrated by actor Wendell Pierce, a friend of his, going all the way back to high school.

We must strike first to prevent what they may be trying to do to us and to save them.

Their leaders must feel our power.

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