NEW ORLEANS — Bert Braud, a well-respected musician, composer, music educator and founding faculty member at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, whose students included Wynton Marsalis and Harry Connick Jr., died Monday in Baton Rouge. He was 84.
Braud taught at NOCCA from 1974 until 1991, drafting the music curriculum for a program whose graduates include Marsalis and his brothers Branford, Delfeayo and Jason, as well as Terence Blanchard, Nicholas Payton, Donald Harrison Jr. and many others.
“He piqued my intellectual interest in music and the history of western music because he was very, very intelligent,” Wynton Marsalis said in an interview for the Jazz Educators Journal. “He’s the first one that told me I should think about trying to become a composer.”
In a 2014 Times-Picayune article, Connick shared memories of his time spent learning from Braud at NOCCA.
"I had two teachers that I was very close to," he said. "One was Ellis Marsalis, obviously, and the other was Bert Braud. There were times when we'd work one-on-one and they'd deconstruct what I was doing and mentor me.”
Braud was a classical and jazz pianist by training but also an accomplished woodwind player.
He composed five symphonies, one of which was performed in 1981 by the London Symphony and the Vienna Philharmonic.
A native of New Orleans, Braud was a graduate of Warren Easton High School and Loyola University.
As a young musician in the 1950s, he played jazz at Tony Almerico’s Parisian Room on Royal St. alongside trumpeter Sharkey Bonano.
At the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blue Room, he was a member of the Dick Stabile Orchestra, accompanying well-known entertainers such as Bob Hope, Perry Como, Mel Torme, Carol Channing, Marguerite Piazza, Robert Merrill and others.
While working in Nashville for a time, he wrote musical arrangements for Dolly Parton, Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff and Tammy Wynette and Porter Wagoner.
After Braud received his master’s degree at the University of Southern California in 1958, local bandleader Rene Louapre convinced him to return home to New Orleans in the 1960s, where he became a music teacher.
In addition to NOCCA, he taught and served as band director at more than ten local elementary, middle and high schools, including his alma mater, Warren Easton.
Mardi Gras Guide publisher Arthur Hardy, an Easton graduate who spent 20 years as a band director at Brother Martin High School, called Braud his mentor.
“He may have been the most talented and brilliant person I have ever met,” Hardy said Friday. “I can truthfully say that I owe my career as a high school band director to him. He inspired me and hundreds of public school students to become better musicians and better citizens.”
In 1965, Braud’s Warren Easton Stage Band won a national competition for high school jazz bands. In 1994, he was inducted into the Warren Easton Hall of Fame.
Braud also taught at Loyola University and at the University of New Orleans. He received a Doctorate in Music Composition from Louisiana State University.
He was presented the Mayor’s Arts Award by Mayor Ernest “Dutch” Morial in 1985.
Survivors include his wife of 53 years, Dr. Elodie Pons Braud; and a daughter, Vanessa Elaine Braud.
A mass of Christian burial will be said on Monday at 10 a.m. at St. Jean Vianney Catholic Church, 16166 S. Harrells Ferry Road, Baton Rouge. Visitation will follow at 11:30 a.m. at Resthaven Funeral Home, 11817 Jefferson Hwy., Baton Rouge.
