The Friends of the Cabildo will present “Hidden Treasures: Jazz Exhibit Edition” on Wednesday, November 4th, with showings at 6 and 7 p.m. at the Old U.S. Mint.

The event will feature a one-night-only, behind-the-scenes viewing of the Louisiana State Museum’s Jazz Collection, including instruments, pictorial sheet music, photographs, records, tapes, manuscripts and more.

The collection documents the careers and lives of key players in the development of jazz history, and showcases historical items like Louis Armstrong’s first cornet and a 1917 disc of the first jazz recording ever made.

You can hear a sample from the Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection below, with a 1917 recording of “L’il Liza Jane” by Earl Fuller’s Jazz Band.

 

Considered the largest of its kind, the collection houses close to 12,000 photographs, over 4,000 78 rpm records from 1905 to the mid- 1950’s, several thousand 12-inch LPs and 45 rpm records, approximately 1,400 reel-to-reel tapes; posters, paintings and prints; hundreds of examples of sheet music from late 19th-century ragtime to popular songs of the 1940’s and 1950’s, several hundred rolls of film featuring concert and nightclub footage, funerals, parades, and festivals; hundred of pieces of relevant ephemera; and architectural fragments from important jazz venues.

Also included in the exhibit is a large set of instruments played by musicians such as Bix Beiderbecke, Edward “Kid” Ory, George Lewis, Sidney Bechet and Dizzy Gillespie.

Museum Historian Karen Leathem and Director of Exhibits Greg Lambousy will present the exhibit. Tickets are available for $25 via the Friends of the Cabildo’s website.