The band performed Jazz standards including Jazz Me Blues, Original Dixieland One Step and Do You Know What It Means (to Miss New Orleans).
Phyllis Conces, Connie and Elaine’s daughter, and Guy Conces gifted the University with a $1 million endowment to host a traditional Jazz concert series that will take place each fall and spring semester. The endowment also funded renovations to the college’s band room, and a hallway with mementos dedicated to Jones’s life and other artifacts honoring Jazz greats with Loyola ties. The endowment also will fund an adjunct professor to teach a traditional Jazz combo each semester.
Gordon Towell, coordinator of the school’s Jazz studies program, said the kind donation from Connie and Elaine Jones has enabled the college to do so much more for the student musicians at Loyola, which has the largest collegiate Jazz studies program in New Orleans.
“The upgrading of the rehearsal facilities gives us an opportunity to craft our performances in a state-of-the-art room,” Towell said. “The addition of concerts, residencies and faculty allows us to further explore the genre of traditional New Orleans Jazz, of which Connie was an excellent practitioner. This gift will develop and inspire future generations of musicians and give them a solid foundation in the roots of the music.”
Conrad “Connie” Jones, a Dixieland Jazz great who played the cornet, began his musical career at age 5 and played just out of high school as part of the Basin Street Six with legendary New Orleans musician Pete Fountain. Jones later played with the Dukes of Dixieland and toured the country with his band, The Crescent City Jazz Band, among other notable accomplishments. He received an honorary doctorate from Loyola in 2012.
