Lured by Rolling Stones performance, half-a-million fans attend New Orleans Jazz Fest

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An additional day and the lure of an look by the Rolling Stones pushed attendance on the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Pageant to a half one million individuals, organizers mentioned Monday.

That was the second highest attendance within the pageant’s historical past — simply behind the 600,000 attendees in 2001. In 2023, greater than 460,000 individuals handed by way of the pageant’s gates.

“This 12 months’s Pageant offered as plainly as ever the great thing about Jazz Fest,” pageant producer Quint Davis mentioned in an announcement. “Watching the Rolling Stones carry out with New Orleans and Louisiana stars Irma Thomas and Dwayne Dopsie was to witness the ability of the Pageant to display the connection of our tradition to a few of the best music of our time.”

The historic, sold-out look of the Rolling Stones final week was the triumphant conclusion of a multi-year effort to carry the band to the occasion, after cancellations in 2019 and 2021. Few pageant performances have been extra anticipated, and even fewer, if any, higher acquired by followers, Davis mentioned in an announcement.

Different 2024 pageant highlights included Jon Batiste’s only-in-New-Orleans set that paid homage to the town’s piano legends, together with Professor Longhair, Fat Domino and Allen Toussaint. There was additionally the Foo Fighters’ electrical return to the occasion in addition to appearances by Chris Stapleton, the Killers, Queen Latifah, Fantasia and Vampire Weekend.

Subsequent 12 months’s occasion is scheduled for April 24-Could 4.