Mark Braud’s New Orleans Jazz Giants

Led by trumpeter & vocalist Mark Braud (b. New Orleans, 1973) — of the Brunious trumpet dynasty

Mark Braud comes from trumpet royalty: grandson of John “Picket” Brunious Sr., nephew of Wendell and John Brunious. A member of Harry Connick Jr.’s band since 2001 and leader of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band from 2008 to 2016, Braud fronts his New Orleans Jazz Giants — a rotating cast of the city’s finest traditional players — at Jazz Fest, the Jazz Museum, and rooms across town, with the energy WWOZ calls “the quintessence of the New Orleans spirit.”

Why We Love Mark Braud’s New Orleans Jazz Giants

The Giants are Mark Braud at his loosest and most joyful — trumpet royalty letting his hair down. Where the Preservation Hall band carries the weight of history, the Jazz Giants carry the fun of it: bawdy early-jazz numbers, songbook standards, and Braud’s easy charm holding court between tunes. He’s played Broadway, toured the world with Harry Connick Jr., and scored television — but put him on a small stage with Tom Fischer and Freddie Lonzo and a Jazz Fest crowd, and you’ll see why WWOZ calls him the quintessence of the New Orleans spirit. This is the tradition as a party, and everybody’s invited.

Biography

Trumpet Royalty, Front and Center

Mark Braud was born June 21, 1973, into one of the great musical families of New Orleans — on both sides. He is the grandson of trumpeter, pianist, and composer John “Picket” Brunious Sr., the nephew of trumpeters Wendell Brunious and the late John Brunious Jr., and a distant relative of Duke Ellington Orchestra bassist Wellman Braud. He picked up the trumpet at twelve — his uncle Wendell gave him his first cornet — studied at NOCCA and majored in jazz studies at the University of New Orleans under Ellis Marsalis, and came up through the city’s brass bands, starting with the Olympia Kids.

In 2001 he joined Harry Connick Jr.’s big band, eventually becoming Connick’s featured trumpet soloist, touring and recording with the band and appearing in Connick’s Broadway shows and his syndicated TV show, Harry. From 2008 to 2016 he led the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, taking over the New Orleans unit from his uncle Wendell. Along the way he has played with everyone from the Marsalis family and the Treme Brass Band to the Foo Fighters, Tom Waits, My Morning Jacket, and Erykah Badu; his screen credits include A Tuba to Cuba, NCIS: New Orleans, Treme, and Broadway’s One Mo’ Time. In 2023 he co-founded the production music library Old Saw Music, and in 2025 he founded the traditional Colossus Brass Band.

His energetic interpretations of melody craft a freshly unpredictable spin on the tradition of jazz and the down-home, honest grooves of New Orleans.

— New Orleans Jazz Museum

The New Orleans Jazz Giants are Braud’s own traditional outfit — a change of pace from the big Preservation Hall machine, with a different cast of top-shelf traditional players each outing: clarinetists like Tom Fischer, trombonists like Freddie Lonzo and Lucien Barbarin, pianist Meghan Swartz, and more, with Braud himself doubling as a charismatic vocalist. They are regulars on the Jazz Fest schedule and at the Jazz Museum’s concert series, where Braud’s between-song patter — Steven Wright-style one-liners included — is half the fun.

Braud also recorded Hot Sausage Rag, a tribute album of his grandfather Picket’s compositions, and his 2018 leader record Living the Tradition — whose title says it all. Few musicians embody the living continuum of New Orleans jazz the way Mark Braud does: the tradition isn’t a museum piece to him, it’s the family business, and the Giants are where he shows it off at its loosest and most joyful.