Doreen Ketchens has been called Lady Louie, Miss Satchmo & The Female Louis Armstrong, to name a few. However, on May 26, 2022, Doreen, was honored with a Doctorate in music from Five Towns College, in Long Island New York. Now she is Dr. Doreen J. Ketchens! Dr. Doreen has changed the way scholars view their clarinets. She has successfully created her own style that blends her classical training with the soul of jazz.

Her intense passion gets under your skin and brings you to a new place. Whether it is Gospel, Blues, R&B, Classical, or Jazz, Dr. Doreen Ketchens can rock her clarinet and then sing like a songbird on a sunny day. Dr. Doreen has been called many names because she plays like Charlie “Bird” Parker, sings like Mahalia Jackson, and has the chops and personality of Louis Armstrong. Dr. Doreen Ketchens, can be found in numerous radio and television shows, including Treme on HBO, Drunk History, music videos and movies – including Out of Blue, Come On, Come On, Tyler Perry’s Temptation, and recently on Jimmy Kimmel Live and CBS Sunday Morning.

Like many of New Orleans' musicians, Ketchens grew up in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans. She studied clarinet in elementary school, beginning as a fifth-grader at Joseph Craig Elementary. To get out of a pop quiz, she responded to an announcement asking interested students to come and sign up for the band. Her first choice was the flute, but most of the girls picked that instrument, so she opted for the clarinet. In junior high school, her band director, Donald Richardson, encouraged her by calling her to “demonstrate musical passages on my instrument because he knew I was lazy and couldn’t do it. Well, one day I just got tired of being laughed at and actually practiced. The stuff was so easy, I was ashamed. Well, went to school the next day, played up a storm, became the teacher’s pet, and had confidence like never before. ”

Doreen played at John F. Kennedy High School in New Orleans and auditioned and was accepted to NOCCA, Louisiana's Arts Conservatory in New Orleans. At NOCCA, she began to study with clarinetist Stanley Weinstein. She attended Delgado Community College, Loyola University of New Orleans, Southern University In New Orleans, and, through scholarships, including one from the New York Philharmonic, University of Hartford's The Hartt School in Hartford, Connecticut. There, she studied with Henry Larsen and had an internship with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. She worked her way through conservatories and college as a chef and met her husband Lawrence Ketchens at Loyola. Lawrence is an arranger and sousaphonist for their band, Doreen's Jazz New Orleans. She found her passion for jazz with Lawrence.

Doreen’s band has represented New Orleans and the United States around the world, performing in multiple countries, from Africa to Thailand. Doreen’s Jazz has also performed for four U.S. Presidents. Bill Clinton, George Bush Sr., Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. The band also boasts 30 volumes of CDs and 3 DVDs.

In addition to being superb performers, Doreen and Lawrence are outstanding educators. Doreen’s Jazz New Orleans performs regularly in schools and universities around the United States and the world. They teach students of many ages and languages about music, multiple genres, musical terms, and performance styles and techniques. They spread the culture and music of New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina and also tell about the COVID pandemic’s effects on the city’s performance culture.