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		Third Prize: Julie Hansbrough Greenwood High School Bowling Green, Kentucky Streets of Orleans I will remember New Orleans, always and forever, as the city where I discovered jazz. Picture it: New Orleans one muggy summer day, a southern marvel of a city, with its wrought-iron balconies and white-columned homes, beignet pastries and spicy gumbo, mounted policemen and bohemian artists, all walking and roaming and gliding through the streets. I'm there, too, amidst it all: a shy thirteen-year-old girl, breathing it in with openmouthed wonder, tagging along behind her family. While I'm strolling down that street at broad noon, a deep keening wail cuts through all the chaos and clamoring, a saxophone wail. I turn, and see a tall, dark man standing in the harsh sunlight, beads of sweat on his forehead, fingers sticky against the brass keys of his sax, playing a fantastic lick of jazz – but I don't know it's jazz, yet. All I know is that it's amazing, stunning, paralyzing. I stop walking, seized by the sound, and listen. The musky sound seems to be channeled from the air, emanating like thin smoke tendrils, curling and wavering and whispering softly. The man's cheeks puff furiously, his eyes are clenched shut, and his expression is all earnest ambition. Sometimes the sound shouts, a brash bark of either joy or despair, but mostly the sound winds easily through crescendos and legatos, like the sound of a late-night bus journey rumbling through mountainous roads, or a drunkard's tale, whispered in a shady bar, or a gorgeous lady weeping alone in a velvet room – He pauses for breath. So many stories in one breath! Fervently, I gasp, "What's that?" "Little melody I invented," he answers, smiling sweetly. "You Like?" I nod, stupefied. "Yeah. Thanks." I toss some coins into his case and scramble to catch up with my family again, but the melody's still stuck in my head. It's been years since then, but I've never quite gotten that melody out of my mind. It's compelled me to collect tunes with blue sounds and funky-but-oddly-alluring titles like "Blue in Green," "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," and "Desafinado (Off Key)." I've discovered the lives of reckless geniuses like Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington, pounding out sounds everywhere from the Big Easy to the Big Apple. I even found a beat-up Conn saxophone to play. Believe me, it was a big change from my usual oboe – at first I couldn't do anything but squeak! But before long, as I played, my very breath was transformed into those haunting, smoky, beautiful saxophone tones that made me shiver as I blew. The Orleans saxophonist showed me all that. Otherwise, I would have thought of jazz as "just" a music genre. But now, when I think of jazz, I think of New Orleans – muggy New Orleans in summer, with the man playing at the street corner, and the beat-up Conn, with my squeaks and groans gradually turning into beautiful tones, connecting me to all those genius players and quirky song names – all of that, for me, is jazz. Return to the Essentially Ellington Essay Contest		Jazz at Lincoln Center Essentially Ellington 33 West 60th Street New York, NY 10023 Email: ee@jalc.org Phone: (212) 258-9812 Fax: (212) 258-9900 For general inquiries about Jazz at Lincoln Center, please click here.