NEW ORLEANS - This weekend New Orleans is celebrating the birth of one of the founding fathers of jazz — Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong.

The celebration, touted as Satchmo Summerfest, will include three stages of traditional and contemporary jazz performances honoring Armstrong, who was born in New Orleans more than a century ago.

Events are being held at the Old U.S. Mint and other French Quarter locales through Sunday. A birthday celebration was slated for Armstrong Park on Friday. Besides a host of seminars on Armstrong's life and legacy, the festival will include two days of live music.

Saturday's performers include the Storyville Stompers and the Louis Armstrong Society jazz band, featuring Charmaine Neville. The Treme brass band plans to hold a children's workshop, where kids will be invited to bring their instruments on stage and perform with the band.

On Sunday, Rebirth brass band performs, along with Trombone Shorty and his Orleans Avenue band and Kermit Ruffins and his Barbecue Swingers. Neville and others are holding a "Props for Pops" session that will include songs by and about Armstrong, whose many nicknames included "Pops."

Also Sunday, there will be a jazz Mass at St. Augustine Church, one of the nation's oldest historically black Catholic churches, followed by a second-line parade — a traditional New Orleans foot parade where watchers often fall in to form a second line of paraders.

Friday's birthday party was to be followed by a red beans and rice luncheon at a downtown New Orleans hotel and seminars about the life of Armstrong.

The first Satchmo Summerfest was held in 2001 to honor what would have been Armstrong's 100th birthday. Though there's dispute over the exact date of the jazz man's birth, festival organizers recognize it on Aug. 4, 1901.

By the time of Armstrong's death in 1971, he was widely recognized as a founding father of jazz. He had a number of nicknames, including "Satch" or "Satchmo," short for Satchelmouth, to describe the way Armstrong shaped his lips to the mouthpiece of his trumpet.

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On the Net:

Satchmo Summerfest, http://www.fqfi.org