Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Warren Haynes Band added to Midnight Preserves 2011 lineup

PRESERVATION HALL ADDS
WARREN HAYNES BAND with THE PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND
TO 2011 MIDNIGHT PRESERVES LINEUP
FRIDAY, MAY 6TH – MIDNIGHT – AT PRESERVATION HALL
TICKETS ON SALE 12PM CST ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27
The Warren Haynes Band (WHB) will play at Preservation Hall at Midnight on Friday May 6th, 2011 as part of the legendary room’s "Midnight Preserves" series. This will be the second show WHB will be playing in New Orleans during Jazzfest. On Thursday, May 5th Warren Haynes Band will play a special show at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre where they will be joined many of the city’s musical treasures. Confirmed guests at the Mahalia show include Trombone Shorty, George Porter Jr., Ivan Neville, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Walter "Wolfman" Washington, and more. The Anders Osborne Band featuring Stanton Moore (Galactic) will open the show.

Proceeds for the Preservation Hall Midnight Preserves performance will benefit The Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program.

Tickets for the Preservation Hall Midnight Preserves Performance are EXTREMELY limited and go on-sale Wednesday 4/27 @ Noon through TicketFly.

Tickets to The Mahalia Jackson show are currently on-sale through Ticketmaster.

Friday, April 22, 2011

"Art & Jazz:Preservation Hall at 50" Exhibit opens next week at the Ogden!


  
On April 28, 2011, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art/University of New Orleans will open Art & Jazz: Preservation Hall at 50.  The exhibit is an insider's and impressionistic view of this famed New Orleans jazz hall. Founded in 1961 by Sandra and Allan Jaffe, Preservation Hall and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band have exposed the world to traditional New Orleans jazz, and have played an integral part in keeping this music and its traditions vibrant and relevant in the 21st century.
            The French Quarter building that is Preservation Hall housed many businesses and residents over the years, including a tavern during in the 1800s, “Pops” Whitesell's photo studio, author Erle Stanley Gardner, and an art gallery. It was during the years of the art gallery that then owner, Larry Borenstein, began holding informal jam sessions for his close friends. Out of these sessions grew the concept of Preservation Hall.
            This exhibition delves into the Jaffe family and Preservation Hall archives, showcasing the roots of the art inspired by the hall and its musicians, including work by Noel Rockmore, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Lee Friedlander and Barry Kaiser. Personal photographs of the Jaffe family, including Ben Jaffe (currently the Creative Director of the hall and the band) and Preservation Hall musicians illustrate how they are intertwined with each other and the French Quarter. Vintage music instruments show the wear and tear of a musician's life, while audio recordings and film document a time and place that has passed, but also embraces the hall's and band's contemporary roots.
            This exhibition hopes to bring viewers an innovative and personal look at a music hall and band that continues to play an important cultural role in the city and the world.
            Art & Jazz: Preservation Hall at 50 is the first in a series of exhibitions celebrating Preservation Hall's 50th anniversary. This fall, the Louisiana State Museum will open a retrospective about the hall and the band in the Old U.S. Mint in New Orleans.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Preservation Hall Announces Midnight Preserves 2011!


NEW ORLEANS’ PRESERVATION HALL
CELEBRATES JAZZ FEST 2011 WITH
SEVENTH ANNUAL MIDNIGHT PRESERVES SERIES
Featuring intimate performances by
The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Charlie Musselwhite,
Buddy Miller, Patty Griffin, Tao Seeger, Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet, Tangiers Blues Band, Shannon McNally, Paul Sanchez & The Rolling Road Show, Treme Brass Band
and one more special guest to be announced next week

New Orleans, LA: Preservation Hall is proud to once again celebrate The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (Jazzfest) with the return of Midnight Preserves, the popular music series hosted by the world-renowned home of Traditional New Orleans Jazz.  Now in its seventh year, Midnight Preserves offers Jazzfest-goers the opportunity to experience some of their favorite artists in the famously intimate setting of Preservation Hall.  This year’s lineup includes Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin (of Band of Joy), Charlie Musselwhite, Tao Seeger, Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet, Paul Sanchez & The Rolling Road Show, Treme Brass Band, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band and more.  An additional special guest will be announced next week.   Tickets are limited and available now at www.preservationhall.com/tickets.   Proceeds from the series will benefit The Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program.

Friday, April 29
8:00pm / The Preservation Hall Jazz Masters featuring Leroy Jones
PURCHASE TICKETS

10:00pm / The Preservation Hall Jazz Band with special guests Buddy Miller & Patty Griffin (of Band of Joy)

Saturday, April 30
8:00pm / The Preservation Hall Jazz Band

10:00pm / The Preservation Hall Jazz Band with special guest Tao Seeger

MIDNIGHT / Paul Sanchez & The Rolling Road Show

Sunday, May 1
8:00-11:00pm / “Song For My Fathers” Preview Show, featuring Tommy Sancton’s New Orleans Legacy Band

Monday, May 2 – Thursday, May 5
New Orleans Jazz Concerts from 8pm-11pm

Friday, May 6
7:30pm / Charlie Musselwhite + Tangiers Blues Band + Shannon McNally

MIDNIGHT / The Preservation Hall Jazz Band with special guest (To Be Announced)

Saturday, May 7
8:00pm / The Preservation Hall Jazz Band

10:00pm / Beausoleil Avec Michael Doucet

MIDNIGHT / Treme Brass Band

Sunday, May 8
8:00-11:00pm / Bob Greene with The Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

More "American Legacies" reviews in Paste, East Bay Express, and Audiophile Audition

Here's some more great reviews on the new "American Legacies" Album:

 Del McCoury and Preservation Hall Jazz Band:
American Legacies

[McCoury Music and Preservation Hall Recordings]

Album Review by Andy Whitman


When the saints go marching in the holler

The intersection of bluegrass and jazz isn’t exactly a bustling one, but the successful fusions of the past – Bela Fleck’s genre-defying albums, David Grisman’s Dawg music – have placed a heavy emphasis on improvisational interplay and breakneck solos. So the meeting of Dixieland revivalists The Preservation Hall Jazz Band and bluegrass traditionalists The Del McCoury Band is more than a little perplexing and intriguing. Both have had their forays into adventurous musical waters, but both are primarily known for their excellence in strict, formal, and relatively hidebound genres. Foggy mountain breakdown on Basin Street, anyone? Just how does that work again?

As American Legacies amply illustrates, the answer is that it works just fine. McCoury, who started his five-decade career playing with the original bluegrass iconoclast Bill Monroe, has shown an increasing elasticity and flexibility of late, touring with Phish and recording with Steve Earle, and here he seamlessly blends his bluegrass band with the brass and rhythm section of PHJB...

Full Article Here


 



Preservation Hall Jazz Band & Del McCoury Band – American Legacies – McCoury Music and Preservation Hall Recordings

On American Legacies, bluegrass and jazz come together with stellar results.
By Doug Simpson
Published on April 12, 2011

The 47-minute American Legacies album – starring the Preservation Hall Jazz Band & the Del McCoury Band – is collaboration in the truest essence of the word and a confluence of two of America’s greatest musical inventions, bluegrass and jazz. Some might believe bluegrass and jazz are miles apart but they share numerous similarities and the two genres have come together in quite a few ways over many decades. First, both styles require dazzling virtuosity, respect for the past and devotion to well-defined creative forms. Secondly, jazz and bluegrass (and thus country) have had extensive, continuing connections. Certain songs have become standards in both musical circles, while several artists have combined country/bluegrass shadings with jazzy swing, from Bob Wills to Louis Armstrong and from Chet Atkins to Herb Ellis.

American Legacies mines tradition and listeners could not ask for better interpreters than the Preservation Hall Jazz Band & the Del McCoury Band. McCoury apprenticed with Bill Monroe before starting his own band more than four decades ago and has sustained a time-honored bent ever since. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band was founded a few years after McCoury began his group and has carried forward a New Orleans-inclined heritage...   

Full Article Here


Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Del McCoury Band
American Legacies

The thin line between jazz and country music has too seldom been crossed over the years, notable exceptions being Louis Armstrong's 1930 trumpet contribution to Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel #9"; the hot soloists and swinging rhythm sections in Bob Willis' and Spade Cooley's bands; Merle Haggard's 1973 LP I Love Dixie Blues; and Wynton Marsalis' recent hookups with Willie Nelson. For the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, today's most prominent purveyor of traditional New Orleans jazz, to team up with the Del McCoury Band, one of the most popular bluegrass groups on the planet, may seem odd, but both genres have firm grounding in blues and place high value on improvised instrumental virtuosity. They go together like gin and vermouth, and the combined ensembles shake it up with aplomb...

Full Article Here





Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Recording Reviews: 'American Legacies' (Available Now!)

Well, the new album's been available for less than 24 hours, and already folks have some great things to say about our wonderful crossover recording.  Check out some of the great reviews!


 Preservation Jazz Hall Band & Del McCoury Band
American Legacies
(McCoury Music)
Rating: ★★★½☆
By Jon Stone April 12th, 2011 at 7:00 am
 
“The band’s in town; they come to play.”

Last year Del McCoury appeared on The Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s star-studded benefit record Preservation singing “After You’ve Gone.” Despite the spirited contributions on that release from both old and new-guard artists (Merle Haggard, Steve Earl, Jim James, Andrew Bird, etc.), McCoury’s weathered “high-and-lonesome” bluegrass voice finds immediate and arresting chemistry with the now 50-year-old Preservation Hall jazz tradition. There must have been a lightning-rod moment sometime during that session where both parties knew that an additional album project was an inevitable necessity. American Legacies is the happy result. The record elaborates on the formula that worked so well on the initial team-up, but this time brings Del McCoury’s band to the party completing the crossover circuit and proving once and for all that ideological and traditional borders between bluegrass and jazz are not only mutable but are largely imaginary.

American music is funny that way. One doesn’t have to go back very far before the faded musical familial lines between estranged cousins become undeniably distinct. In this way, when Del McCoury and his band start playing with the musicians in the Preservation Hall at New Orleans, there is an easiness to the collaboration – one due, surely, to the talent of both bands, but also with a sense of ease that sounds and feels like musical reunion...

Good Times And Great Spirits Await With The Preservation Hall Jazz Band & The Del McCoury Band!

Grab a cold one, some great food and wonderful friends because a plethora of musical fun awaits with the American Legacies and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band & The Del McCoury Band! Separately, these musical geniuses have made it their life long objective to preserve traditional American music with tremendous skill, faith and drive within their respective genres. Now, lords of New Orleans jazz meet legends of bluegrass in one of the most compelling collaborations of 2011.

 With McCoury’s smooth and signature tenor, fresh and clean clarinets, fun and diverse fiddles and bangin’ banjos, one can clearly hear the musical magic that was created within the release.

The Preservation Hall Jazz Band & The Del McCoury Band explore common and diverse ground to bring a credible and fresh balance of bluegrass and jazz in this project. Multiple artists combine their creativity and luster into a rich musical mix of distinctive American musical forms.

Known as ambassadors of bluegrass, the Del McCoury Band is fronted by veteran Del McCoury, a legendary front man of bluegrass who has been enthralling audiences since the 1980s.

With such songs as ‘A Good Gal,’ ‘Jambalaya,’ ‘The Band’s In Town,’ and ‘I’ll Fly Away,’ one clearly hears the merging of greatness and songs that respectfully exude joy and vibrance...

Still don't have a copy of your own?

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Preservation Hall presents a stage production of Tom Sancton's Song For My Fathers - May 13-15, 21, 22 at Le Chat Noir



Preservation Hall presents
A Stage Production of Tom Sancton’s Book of New Orleans Memoirs
“Song For My Fathers”
featuring Tom Sancton & The Preservation Hall All-Stars
Directed by Ron Rona, Produced by Ben Jaffe
May 13-15, 21, 22 at Le Chat Noir
In continuing celebration of their Golden Anniverary, Preservation Hall will present five nights of the unique multimedia stage production based on Tom Sancton’s widely acclaimed book of memoirs Song For My Fathers: A New Orleans Story in Black and White at Le Chat Noir on May 13-15 and May 21 & 22. Directed by Ron Rona (The New Orleans Bingo! Show) and produced by Preservation Hall’s Creative Director Ben Jaffe, Song For My Fathers features live readings by Sancton, historic video and photography and live musical interludes featuring The Preservation Hall All-Star band. Song For My Fathers is an insider’s account of a special moment in New Orleans cultural history: the so-called revival of traditional jazz, the phoenix-like return from the ashes of the old players and their music, spearheaded by the founding of Preservation Hall in 1961. Published in 2006, the book was hailed as a “newly minted classic” by the Times-Picayune and was selected by Tulane for the university’s Fall Reading Project that same year.

Sancton grew up in New Orleans. After studies at Harvard and Oxford, which he attended as a Rhodes Scholar, he began a 22-year career as a writer, editor, and foreign correspondent for Time Magazine, serving most recently as Paris Bureau Chief. In August 2007, feeling the tug of his roots, Sancton returned to live in New Orleans after a long residence in France in order to take up the Andrew W. Mellon professorship at Tulane, where he currently teaches creative writing.

Preservation Hall is the main venue of this coming-of-age memoir; Sancton’s relationship with the old jazz musicians, who called themselves “the mens,” is the central theme. Most of the original “mens” are long since departed, but the current Preservation Hall players are their successors in carrying forward the New Orleans jazz tradition. The performance at Le Chat Noir is not merely a literary reading, but a unique stage performance that shifts between words and music, past and present, memory and experience.

Watch the teaser video for the show:

One More Week Until the Release of American Legacies! New Video

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Aurora Nealand & The Royal Roses present a night of Silent film and Live Music!

Just an update on Late Night at the Hall featuring Aurora Nealand & The Royal Roses on April 7 at 11:30pm at Preservation Hall. 

"Join us for a lovely evening of antics as we show two great Keaton Shorts, accompanied by live music played by the Royal Roses. Plus a showing of local NOLA film makers Benh Zeitlin's great short "Glory at Sea". Awesome movies in a beautiful setting with great live music.. A great way to kick off FQFest!.. there may be popcorn... do come. $8 at the door! with Aurora Nealand, David Boswell, Charlie Halloran, Matthew Bell, Aubrey Freeman, Paul Thibodeaux."

Hope to see y'all there!
photo by Elsa Hahne