Fortner's Katrina Album Ditches Self-Editing
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- Sullivan Fortner's sixth album "Leave That in There" takes its title from a line in Spike Lee's 2006 documentary "When the Levees Broke," where a woman, told she left her purse in her car during the flood, tersely replies: "Leave that in there."
- Fortner abandoned the "self-editing way" of previous records — telling the Guardian he "took an edible and I just said, screw it" — after receiving the Larry J Bell award, a $300,000 (£225,000) prize given every four years to a standout jazz pianist.
- Two tracks — "A Poignant Time" and "Another Poignant Time" — reference a Wynton Marsalis line from the documentary: "I think that this is a great moment in American history, because in this moment we see a lot of what's wrong with us," and Fortner says residents are "still dealing with the trauma of that time, even now."
- Fortner was 18 and preparing for another year at Ohio's Oberlin Conservatory when Katrina struck; he saw his girlfriend and her mother waiting for buses at the Convention Center in a live CNN panning shot before phone lines went down.
- Fortner's trust in intuition traces to lessons with pianist Fred Hersch, who told him not to prepare tunes but "just play something for me" — a philosophy now visible in unpolished Instagram duets with singer Cécile McLorin Salvant running through Sting and Noël Coward.
- At the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, Fortner's classmates included Chief Adjuah, Trombone Shorty and Jon Batiste; Batiste later double-booked himself, leading Fortner to fill in on piano with trumpeter Roy Hargrove.
Why it matters: Fortner is a three-time Grammy winner who just landed both a 2025 Grammy for "Southern Nights" and the $300,000 Bell award — financial security that lets him stop chasing takes and release unfiltered work rooted in unresolved New Orleans trauma he says residents are still reckoning with two decades after Katrina.
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