My music major at Yale University and my master's in church music (organ concentration) from Westminster Choir College have led to 20-plus years as a church musician, as well as considerable concentration on classical music.

But I flirted with the popular when I was persuaded by some choir members to help them form a rock band ("The Eagles?" I asked. "Isn't that a sports team?") This experience led to an intimate acquaintance with a few random songs that helped me understand how rock music routinely breaks the classical rules I have slavishly obeyed for 25 years. But not why.

I was ripe for Satchmo Summer Fest.

New Orleans's 3-year-old annual celebration of native son Louis Armstrong's birthday is a smorgasbord of lectures, panels and live performances, all playing against the lavish musical backdrop of the Crescent City. During a long weekend closest to Armstrong's Aug. 4 birthday, I OD'ed on music ranging from karaoke and blues to Dixieland. I soaked up information about jazz in general and Louis in particular during events like "Banjomania: A Fractured History of the Jazz Banjo" and "Burnin' Satchmo: Louis Armstrong in Ken Burns' Jazz." And I listened fellow attendees - longtime jazz enthusiasts who aren't players - talk knowingly and reverentially about jazz.

All of this came in the context of a city known for its extravagance. I stayed at the Hotel Monaco, one of just five hotels in the United States included in Conde Nast Traveller's "Hot List," but charging only $109 a night during the summer off-season. There, fuzzy bathrobes sport leopard spots, and a black fur adorns the foot of the bed. I ate extraordinary food (try the creamy shrimp salad at Antoine's, the spicy bisque bursting with seafood at Brennan's, or the saucy crab cakes at The Funky Butt).

And I learned about jazz.

My first eye-opener was the brass band, a seriously functional organization that takes on the pain of funerals and the joy of parades, and gives intense expression to both. I listened to a lecture-demonstration by veteran bass drum player Lawrence Batiste ("In the traditional brass band, the bass drum man keeps the beat") and snare player Christie Jourdain ("We keep the snare on the low end - he may accent beat two, while I accent the horns"). Later, I experienced the drums in action as I danced with the crowds following Satchmo Summer Fest's Second Line Parade. I heard first-hand as the driving beat of the bass and the dancing counterpoint of the snare underpinned the intertwining brass melodies, giving sense and utility to the improvisational fancies of the trumpets and trombones.

This music lies at the very foundation of jazz.

After the parade, a talk by John Joyce, associate professor of music at Tulane University, opened my ears further.

Joyce explained that vaudeville singers - the popular entertainers when Louis burst on the scene - gave carefully polished performances, painstakingly reproducing the pitches, rests and rhythms written by the composer. I perked up my ears. This was my scene! For more than 40 years, I have struggled - from finger exercises to Bach fugues - to reproduce the document, to realize the text. In that noble calling, the player inserts herself only subtly, through gaps in the classic's complex structure.

Louis Armstrong blew the structure wide open.

Joyce played a delightful recording of vaudeville singer May Alix singing "Butter and Eggs Man." He waved the sheet music. "Everything she's doing is right on this page," he told us as we listened. Suddenly a recorded Louis Armstrong - who was at the session to play the trumpet - jumped in to sing a response to the straightforward tune, dancing around the melody, inserting nonsense syllables, even cracking a self-deprecating joke.

He made the song jazz. (Soloist Alix was probably disconcerted, to say the least, Joyce told us.) "Louis reshaped the song in his own image," Joyce said. "This was a life-changing approach for American popular singers."

But Satchmo Summer Fest wasn't yet finished messing with my head.

At the pub crawl - $20 gets you in to hear everything in 14 venues centering on Frenchman Street - every kind of jazz was going on. The gleaming trombone sound of Delfeayo Marsalis (brother of Wynton and Branford) soared; liquid solos cascaded from the saxophone of Ravi Coltrane (son of John). Enthralled, bombarded and engulfed in this explosively joyous and interactive style, I stumbled on a blinding truth: Jazz is a conversation. You may say something inappropriate; you may misunderstand; you may not express yourself clearly; or you may reach the impassioned heart of your idea.

But there are no wrong notes. The goals are to advance the discussion and go home satisfied. A revelation to one who finishes every performance with a mental enumeration of her mistakes.

As I write this, I am going home from a city rendered magic by the intensity, vitality and omnipresence of its music. I'll still play Bach on Sunday and aspire to the complexity, brevity and brilliance that comes with playing (most of) the right notes.

And also, I dream of starting a conversation with Louis Armstrong's legacy. I won't be very fluent. But Satchmo Summer Fest helped me understand how to open this dialog.

Get directions and a map @