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From Marsalis to Marshall: How a top jazz piano competition landed in West Virginia

By DAVE LAVENDER

The Herald-Dispatch

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — To get from New Orleans to here, the Mississippi and Ohio rivers did not flow backward.

For the connection between Ellis Marsalis and Marshall University that resulted in the first Huntington International Jazz Festival occurring this week, it went through the Greenbrier River Valley.

Back in the day when Ellis Marsalis went to graduate school at Loyola University, the dean of the college of music was Joe Buttram, who also happens to be married to Cathey Sawyer, who for the past 27 years has been the artistic director of the Greenbrier Valley Theater in Lewisburg, West Virginia.

Read the entire article: http://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/from-marsalis-to-marshall-how-a-top-jazz-piano-competition/article_62553168-6642-534c-a63b-451ee0d42056.html

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