New Orleans Jazz Museum

Overview

The New Orleans Jazz Museum is located in the historic French Quarter neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. Built into the historic Old U.S. Mint Building on 400 Esplanade Avenue, the museum is dedicated to the preservation and celebration of the history of jazz music as well as contemporary programming designed to keep its traditions alive in the present. This includes an active live performance schedule – bringing jazz musicians from around the world to perform at the space – as well as facilities dedicated to recording, live-streaming, and the important work of archiving. The museum also documents the living traditions of jazz through its in-house record label, Gallantin Street Records.

Program

The museum’s third floor performance space and recording studio underwent a thorough renovation in 2023 to better align with the museum’s standards for live and recorded music. This included a robust re-thinking of both spaces for use for live broadcast and webcast programming.

WSDG was brought into the project by the Herb Alpert Foundation to redesign the recording studio space and update interior room acoustics and A/V for the live performance space. The team partnered with Trapolin-Peer Architects and NOLA Jazz Chief Production Engineer Danny Kadar.

Design

The 150-capacity live venue serves a multi-purpose role as both an energetic performance space and as a studio space for capturing the museum’s daily concerts. The room’s existing slatted wood acoustic wall treatments served as an inspiration for the new wrap-around front of house desk located in the rear of the space. WSDG carefully matched the wood and design patterns for a seamless aesthetic experience. The team also made A/V recommendations for the sound system to optimize acoustic results.

The venue’s control room was extensively redesigned by WSDG to turn into a world-class recording and mixing space, befitting its multi-role purpose. This included reshaping the room and updating its interior room acoustics, building a new ISO booth, adding accommodations for Dolby Atmos recording and mixing, and reworking the HVAC systems for quieter operation. The suite provides the sound engineers of NOLA Jazz with a creative haven in which to mix its regular live performances for broadcast and webcast, create audio content for the museum’s exhibits, and host artists to record for Gallantin Street Records.

Photo credit: Walker Bankson